•NRLF 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


FROM  THE    LIBRARY  OF 

DR.  JOSEPH   LeCONTE. 

GIFT  OF  MRS.   LECONTE. 


BIOLOGY 

LIBRARY  No. 

G 


REPRINTED  FROM 

THE  AMERICAN  FIELD, 

iioago— New  York 
—London.] 

Vol.  XL1,  »*.  26,  to  Vol.  XL1I,  No, 


> 


• 


LECTURES  ON  BIOLOGY, 


Delivered  before  the  Catholic  University  of  America 


BY 


DR.  R.  W.  SHUFELDT. 


1892. 


lectures  on 


1.  Its  History  and  Present  Domain. 

II.  Its  Relations  to  Geology. 

III.  Its  Value  as  a  Study. 

IV.  Its  Growth  and  Future  Influence. 


BY  DR.  R.  W.  SHUFEKDT. 


1892. 


A.  .1* 

XV     OFTHF 

.[    UNIVERSITY  ) 

V  s 

N^C         \^x 


BIOLOGY 
LIBRARY 

G 


ft  W  ^\ 


or  THF 
UNIVERSITY 


PREFf\GE. 


As  the  writer  states  in  the  leading  paragraph  of  the 
first  of  the  four  lectures  here  offered,  they  were  delivered 
in  response  to  an  invitation'of  the  Right  Reverend  Rector 
Bishop  Keane,  of  the  Catholic  University  of  America, 
and  addressed  to  the  faculty  and  students  of  that  insti- 
tution and  an  audience  of  ladies  and  gentlemen  coming 
principally  from  the  city  of  Washington,  D.  C.,  and  gath- 
ered in  the  public  lecture  hall  of  the  University,  that  seat 
of  learning  being  situated  but  a  few  miles  from  the  afore- 
said city. 

The  lectures  were  delivered  in  the  order  they  are  here 
printed,  and  upon  the  four  Thursday  afternoons  in  the 
month  of  January,  1892,  between  the  hours  of  four  and 
five  o'clock. 

The  author  of  them  not  being  a  Roman  Catholic  in  any 
sense  of  the  word,  nor  even  an  acceptor  of  the  fundamen- 
tal requirements  of  the  Christain  faith,  it  was  a  matter 
of  no  little  surprise,  and,  it  may  be  added,  of  gratifica- 
tion, that  he  was  the  recipient  of  a  call  to  undertake  such 
a  task,  coming,  as  it  did,  from  such  a 
quarter.  Surprise,  from  the  fact  that  all  history  goes 
to  show  that  Catholicism  has  been — ever  since  the  dawn 
of  learning — the  open  and  avowed  enemy  of  all  science 
and  scientific  progress:  and  gratification,  principally  due 
to  the  evidence  that,  perhaps,  the  day  was  drawing  nigh 
when  even  Catholics  were,  at  last,  prepared  not  only  to 
listen  to  the  teachings  of  science  but  to  feel  the  truth  of 
them.  My  sense  of  gratification  was  the  further  intensi- 


152986 


11  PREFACE. 

fled  by  the  knowledge  of  the  fact  that  the  University  had 
completed  all  its  plans  to  erect  upon  its  broad  grounds  an 
expensive  and  substantial  college,  equipped  with  faculty, 
library  and  modern  laboratories,  in  the  halls  of  which 
were  to  be  taught  to  Catholic  students  the  various 
branches  of  the  biological  sciences. 

Later  in  the  present  preface,  however,  it  will  be  neces- 
sary for  me  to  show  that  the  pleasure,  to  which  reference 
has  just  been  made,  did  not  remain  an  unmixed  one 
throughout  all  my  relations  with  the  University  and  her 
Washington  press  exponents;  and,  as  such  subsequent 
slight  jars  as  did  occur  undoubtedly  are  significant  and 
have  their  lessons  for  us,  they  will  be  briefly  dwelt  upon 
in  the  present  connection,  robbed  of  all  passion  and  all 
personality.  So  far  as  the  lecturer  was  concerned  he  was 
invariably  treated  with  the  utmost  courtesy  on  all  oc- 
casions, by  everyone  having  anything  to  do  with  the 
University,  and  for  that  his  sincere  thanks  are  here 
tendered.  The  first  lecture  was  received  by  both  faculty 
and  divinity  students  with  very  general  and  marked  ap- 
proval. Not  so,  however,  the  second  one,  and  still  less, 
the  remaining  two.  They  were  disapproved,  and  upon 
the  best  authority  the  writer  learned  that  he  was  roundly 
denounced  as  a  "heretic"  and  a  "pagan,"  by  one  or  two 
of  the  students  in  their  discussions  of  the  lectures  after 
the  same  had  been  delivered.  In  one  instance,  it  required 
the  action  of  the  rector  to  quell  the  feeling; 
especially  in  the  case  of  one  student,  who  openly  ex- 
pressed himself  in  words  to  this  effect:  "That  had  the 
lecturer  lived  in  a  former  century  he  would  have  been 
burned  as  he  well  deserved  to  be."  At  the  latter  part  of 
the  last  lecture,  one  of  the  "Fathers,"  a  member  of  the 
faculty,  was  seen  to  place  his  fingers  in  his  ears  rather 
than  be  corrupted  by  listening  to  my  heresy.  When  one 
thinks  for  a  moment  how  the  dreaded  Inquisition  dealt 
with  anatomists,  "in  a  former  century,"  such  acts  can, 
by  the  writer,  only  be  construed  as  the  very  greatest  com- 
pliments that  possibly  could  have  been  meted  out  to  him. 


PREFACE.  lit 

Cardinal  Gibbons  personally  requested  that  the  lectures 
be  published  in  The  Catholic  Mirror,  of  Baltimore,  Md., 
and  the  first  two  did  appear  in  that  paper.  Only  ap- 
proved portions  of  tnem,  however,  were  thus  allowed  to 
see  the  light,  and  for  some  reason — not  given— the  last 
two  were  not  printed  at  all.  Another  paper,  The 
Catholic,  News,  of  Washington,  undertook  to  pub- 
lish them  in  full,  and,  as  in  the  case  with  the  Mirror, 
the  first  two  did  come  out,  though  my  remarks  upon  the 
influence  of  the  Inquisition  on  the  labors  of  early  writers 
in  anatomy  were  carefully  suppressed.  This  newspaper 
likewise  was  unable  to  publish  the  last  two  lectures,  and, 
after  the  appearance  in  its  columns  of  the  first  one,  its 
editor  was  careful  to  preface  each  portion  as  it  appeared 
in  part  with  the  following  caution,  printed  in  brackets: 
"The  University  assumes  no  responsibility  for  opinions 
advanced  by  lecturers  in  the  public  courses." 

After  a  careful  second  reading  of  my  "opinions,"  I  have 
been  totally  unable  to  discover  a  single  statement  that 
cannot  be  most  amply  sustained  by  the  very  best  of  evi- 
dence, and  doubt  whether  any  fair-minded  and  intelligent 
Roman  Catholic  can  do  otherwise. 

So  much  for  the  history  of  these  lectures,  which  are 
now  for  the  first  time  presented  in  full  to  my  readers.  In 
most  cases  science  has  long  been  familiar  with  the  facts 
they  set  forth;  not  so,  however,  I  fear,  the  vast  hosts  of 
Catholics  in  this  country,  both  laymen  and  clergy.  So  it 
is  to  them,  especially,  that  I  dedicate  my  labors,  with 
the  profound  hope  that  they  may  read  and  comprehend 
the  truths  I  have  endeavored  to  convey. 


I. 

Its  History  and  Present  Domain. 


In  1891,  when  the  eminent  head  of  this  University, 
Bishop  Keane,  extended  to  me  the  distinguished  honor  of 
an  invitation  to  deliver  during  the  course  of  the  present 
Winter  four  consecutive  lectures,  upon  any  subject  that 
I  might  be  pleased  to  elect,  I  was,  for  a  time,  in  a  degree 
doubtful  in  my  mind  as  to  what  department  of  science  I 
should  make  application  for  material  to  meet  so  impor- 
tant a  duty. 

Upon  glancing  at  the  subjects  of  lectures  delivered  from 
this  chair  during  former  Winters  by  my  most  able  prede- 
cessors and  upon  inquiry,  I  discovered  that  the  largest 
attendances  had  rewarded  those  who  had  brought  before 
you  some  matter  selected  from  man's  civic 
history  or  from  his  literature,  and  it  was 
urged  upon  me  to  adopt  some  similar  coarse. 
But  the  idea  by  no  means  coincided  with  my 
own  views  in  the  premises,  for,  I  argued,  in  the  first 
place,  had  the  University  any  such  plan  in  contemplation 
it  would  never  have  asked  a  biologist  to  carry  it  out,  how- 
ever well  he  may  have  accomplished  it;  and,  in  the  second 
place,  I  felt  I  was  called  upon  to  face  not  only  an  audience 
coming  from  one  of  the  greatest  scientific  centers  that 
marks  our  civilization,  but,  in  addition  thereto,  a  faculty 
and  their  pupils  which  represent  an  institution  which 
promises  to  be  in  its  methods  and  aims  one  of  the  broad- 
est seats  of  learning  throughout  all  this  broad  land. 
Under  such  circumstances  it  devolved  upon  me  to  select 
for  your  consideration  the  craft  to  which  I  have  devoted 
more  than  twenty  of  the  best  working  years  of  my  life,  and 
still,  in  so  selecting,  would  invite  you  into  fields  that  not 
only  are  pregnant  with  interest,  but  offer  their  full 
measure  of  instruction,  to  say  nothing  of  the  influence 
that  instruction  has  upon  all  human  pursuits  and  the 
practical  ends  of  everyday  life. 

When  properly  interpreted  and  applied,  the  science  of 


2  LECTURES 

biology  will  meet  what  I  have  just  claimed  for  it,  and  it 
is  to  its  study  that  I  now  invite  your  attention. 

Biology,  at  the  present  time,  has  come  to  include  that 
group  of  sciences  which  have  to  deal  with  all  those 
phenomena  which  are  exhibited  on  the  part  of  living 
matter,  and,  as  so  defined,  is  sharply  marked  off  from 
what  may  be  termed  the  abiological  sciences;  as  for  ex- 
ample astronomy,  chemistry  and  physics. 

A  moment's  thought  will  make  it  clear  that  such  a 
definition  as  the  one  just  given  will  not  only  include  the 
study  of  man  and  his  works,  both  past  and  present,  but 
likewise  such  special  studies  as,  for  instance,  the  science 
of  sociology  and  the  science  of  psychology.  The  last 
named,  however,  is  usually  considered  but  a  department 
of  physiology,  and  the  first  but  those  phenomena  ex- 
hibited on  the  part  of  men  in  society,  or,  perhaps,  I  had 
better  say,  that  science  which  deals  with  human  society. 

As  thus  drawn  then  at  the  present  time,  the  line  of 
demarcation  beiween  the  biological  and  the  abiological 
sciences  is  quite  a  hard  and  fast  one,  lor,  as  yet,  we  are 
ignorant  of  any  link  that  connects  living  and  not-living 
matter. 

Botany,  in  its  widest  sense,  falls  within  the  scope  of 
the  biological  sciences,  as  does  most  assuredly  anatomy, 
although  in  the  case  of  the  latter  the  student  in  that  de- 
partment deals  mostly  with  dead  matter  or  the  cadaveric 
remains  of  animals:  such  remains,  however,  once  pos- 
sessed life,  which  is  more  than  we  can  say  for  such  an 
object,  for  instance,  as  a  crystal  or  a  meteorite. 

Naturally,  one  may  now  ask,  how  about  palaeontology? 
that  science  which  treats  of  the  fossil  remains  of  animals 
inclosed  within  the  crust  of  the  earth  or  occurring  upon 
its  surface,  but  in  any  event  so  closely  linked  with  the 
abiological  science  of  geology. 

Well,  it  is,  also,  strictly  speaking,  one  of  the  biological 
sciences;  and,  in  my  estimation,  but  one  of  the  depart- 
ments of  morphology.  Apart  from  vegetable  morphology, 
animal  morphology  includes  not  only  palaeontology  but 
that  entire  group  of  studies  which  formerly  were  classi- 
fied under  anatomy  and  comparative  anatomy;  in  other 
words,  animal  morphology  takes  into  consideration  the 
study  of  the  form  and  structure  of  all  animals,  whether 
dead,  living,  fossilized,  or  whether  existing  or  extinct. 
Human  anatomy  is  then  a  subject  that  falls  within  the 
purview  of  the  morphologist. 

All  studies  biological  are  more  or  less  dependent  upon 
each  other,  as  the  history  of  all  animated  nature  is  ex- 


ON  BIOLOGY.  3 

plicable  through  one  great  system  of  laws.  Frequently 
one  of  the  abiological  sciences  is  a  most  indispensable  ad- 
junct to  the  proper  comprehension  of  one  of  the  biological 
sciences,  and  I  can  cite  no  better  example  than,  the  de- 
pendence of  physiology  upon  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
chemistry;  and  hardly,  to  a  lesser  extent,  physics.  For 
instance,  the  study  of  the  blood  is  an  important  chapter 
in  our  work  upon  the  investigation  of  the  phenomena  of 
living  matter;  but  the  blood  is  made  up  of  many  chemical 
constituents,  and  to  understand  the  nature  of  its  flow 
through  the  vessels  we  must  have  recourse  to  the  laws 
demonstrated  for  us  by  the  physicist. 

The  question  may  be  raised  here,  by  anyone  who  has 
not  followed  the  growth  of  science  for  the  last  quarter  of 
a  century,  nor  heeded  the  teachings  of  her  earlier  liter- 
ature for  a  very  considerably  longer  period  of  time,  that 
it  appears  to  vhem  that  the  laborers  in  those  fields  have 
recently  very  sadly  mixed  up  by  these  apparently  new 
classifications,  what  was  formerly  very  clear  to  all  under 
the  time-honored  title  of  the  "Natural  History  Branches." 
This  is  not  the  case,  however,  and  I  will  now  proceed  to 
show  you  that  many  of  the  terms  I  have  been  using  are 
by  no  means  new,  and  even  the  word  biology  itself  was 
first  used  by  Lamarck  in  one  of  his  works  published  in 
1801,  and  that  eminent  naturalist  meant  to  convey  by  the 
term  almost  exactly  what  we  do  at  the  present  time — 
nearly  a  century  after  he  wrote  it — that  is,  a  discourse 
upon  living  things  or  upon  life. 

Scientific  thought,  prior  to  the  revival  of  learning  in 
Europe,  was  more  or  less  completely  under  the  sway  of 
the  great  impress  made  upon  it  by  the  immortal  Greek 
philosopher,  Aristotle.  Not  that  many  other  observers  of 
Nature  and  philosophical  thinkers  did  not  exist  during 
that  long  lapse  of  time,  for  that  would  not  be  true,  but 
what  I  do  mean  to  imply  is  that  however  weighty  were 
the  works  of  those  others  during  the  long  sequence  of 
centuries  before  the  revival  of  thought  and  learning, 
the  teachings  in  science  as  put  forth  by  Aris- 
totle powerfully  dominated.  Although  Aristotle  little 
dreamed  of  the  mutual  dependence  of  the  various  depart- 
ments of  science,  yet  he  was  the  first  to  place  upon  a  sure 
footing  those  methods  of  research  which,  during  the  ages 
since  his  time,  have  led  up  to  such  a  knowledge;  in  other 
words,  he  was  not  only  an  original  investigator  but  he 
was  a  great  comparer  of  those  facts  that  were  the  fruits 
of  his  investigations.  He,  in  reality,  established  the  first 
school  of  comparative  anatomy,  or  as  it  is  now  more 


4  LECTURES 

familiarly  known  to  us,  comparative  morphology.  He 
applied  those  facts  to  the  elucidation  of  zoological  prob- 
lems, and  taught  that  sound  zoological  knowledge  could 
be  gained  only  by  a  close  study  of  nature,  and  a  com- 
prehension of  natural  laws. 

When  we  come  to  think  that  this  great  philosopher  of 
ancient  Greece  flourished  over  twenty-two  hundred  years, 
ago,  it  is  really  remarkable  what  a  mass  of  facts  he 
brought  to  light  and  the  extent  to  which  he  systematized 
them.  Yet  it  must  be  remembered  that  anatomy,  as 
known  to  Aristotle,  was  altogether  too  crude  to  be  of  any 
service  in  directions  other  than  I  have  just  pointed  out. 
It  was,  for  instance,  too  inexact  for  practical  use  in  med- 
icine and  surgery,  as  was  his  physiology  too  erroneous  to 
be  of  any  value  in  medical  diagnosis.  He  had  no  concep- 
tion whatever  of  the  relations  between  chemistry  and 
physiology,  any  more  than  he  saw  the  bearing  of  zoology 
upon  the  medical  art  and  the  science  of  surgery. 

Between  one  hundred  and  fifty  and  two  hundred  years 
after  Christ,  Galen,  the  celebrated  physician  of  Perga- 
mus,  had  largely  revised,  and  to  no  small  degree  extend- 
ed, what  had  been  done  by  Aristotle  in  the  medical  and 
biological  sciences.  About  the  middle  of  the  fourth  cen- 
tury the  work  was  again  recompiled  by  Oribasius,  after 
whose  time  the  world's  history  passes  into  the  Dark  Ages, 
a  period  when  ignorance  and  barbarism  ruled  and  all 
scientific  research  was  practically  abandoned  and  forgot- 
ten. 

Zoology  and  botany  were  brought  down  to  the  com- 
mencement of  that  epoch  in  the  works  of  Pliny,  who 
flourished  between  three  and  four  centuries  after 
the  death  of  Aristotle.  We  are  all  more  or  less  familiar 
with  his  thirty-six  volumes  on  natural  history,  consisting 
as  they  do  chiefly  of  a  compilation  of  the  labors  of  others 
in  the  same  field,  who  had  lived  during  ages  prior  to  his 
day.  The  work  of  that  time-honored  naturalist,  although 
very  valuable  in  some  respects  is,  nevertheless,  loaded 
with  absurd  stories,  myths,  and  impossible  miracles.  He 
was  entirely  without  any  knowledge  of  even  the  very 
simplest  laws  of  classification,  as  applied  to  any  branch 
of  learning  in  general,  and  to  the  natural  sciences  in  par- 
ticular. Still,  quoting  from  so  many,  many  authorities 
as  he  did,  his  descriptions  of  animals,  plants  and  miner- 
als long  remained  standard,  and  profoundly  influenced 
the  popular  mind  and  its  ideas  about  such  subjects.  So, 
as  a  whole,  his  compilations,  no  doubt,  with  all  their 


ON  BIOLOGY.  5 

faults,  present  us  with  a  view  of  the  entire  range  of 
science  as  it  was  understood  at  the  time  of  his  death. 

After  the  revival  of  learning  in  Europe,  scientific 
thought  was  still  powerfully  tinctured  with 
the  teachings  of  the  schools  of  Aris- 
totle, of  Galen,  of  Pliny  and  of  their  prede- 
cessors, and  their  less  distinguished  contemporaries. 
Indeed,  from  that  epoch  which  saw  the  fall  of  the 
Roman  Empire  down  to  the  time  I  have  just  mentioned, 
or  to  the  beginning  of  the  Sixteenth  Century,  few  were 
those  who  contributed  anything  to  the  real  progress  of 
the  various  sciences.  Chief  among  them,  perhaps,  was 
Albertus  Magnus,  who,  born  at  Lavingen,  in  Suabia,  in 
1205,  wrote  a  ''History  of  Animals,"  in  twenty-one  folio 
volumes,  which  was  published  at  Lyons  in  1651.  They 
were  almost  entirely  devoid  of  any  original  research,  and 
were  otherwise  quite  Aristotelian  in  character.  The 
same  strictures  apply  to  the  works  of  Paolo  Giovio  and  of 
Bock;  the  former,  an  Italian  naturalist,  wrote  "De 
Romanis  Piscibus,"  which  appeared  in  1524,  being  dedi- 
cated to  the  Cardinal  of  Bourbon;  while  the  latter,  gen- 
erally known  by  the  name  of  Tragus,  published,  in  1549, 
a  work  entitled  "KraeuterbucV  von  den  vier  Elementen, 
Thieren,  Yoegeln,  und  Fischen,"  which  was  stamped 
with  the  same  faults  that  characterized  the  productions 
of  the  earlier  writers  upon  the  same  subject. 

Passing  through  the  Sixteenth  Century,  we  still  find 
the  same  servile  building  upon  the  Aristotelian  basis, 
the  same  ignorance  of  the  affinities  of  animals  and  plants, 
and  the  same  desire  to  more  or  less  clothe  the  natural 
with  the  supernatural.  Almost  an  entire  absence  of  any 
orderly  arrangement  or  classification  of  facts  or  forms 
prevailed,  schemes  so  essential  to  the  true  progress  of  all 
knowledge.  Slow  digestion,  however,  was  still  going  on, 
and  during  this  century  the  groundwork  laid  down  by 
the  fathers  in  zoology  and  science  was  preserved  by  in- 
dustrious hands,  and  by  minds  which,  in  some  instances, 
worked  remarkably  well  when  we  come  to  consider  the 
times  of  their  flourishing.  During  this  epoch  Salviani 
and  Rondelet  proved  themselves  to  be  no  mean  ichthy- 
ologists, who,  with  the  physician  Belon,  of 
France,  really  laid  the  cornerstone  of  the  modern 
science  of  ichthyology.  It  is  rather  a  remarkable 
fact  that  these  three  naturalists,  working  in  the  same 
fields  and  so  thoroughly  independent  of  each  other, 
should  have  all  flourished  about  the  same  time— that  is, 
between  1553  and  1558.  About  the  same  time  Conrad 


G  LECTURES 

Gesner,  who  was  born  at  Zurich,  in  1516,  was  engaged 
upon  his  principal  work,  the  "Historia  Naturalis  Ani- 
malium."  In  the  four  folio  volumes  of  that  treatise  we 
but  again  see  a  series  of  illy  selected  extracts  from  the 
works  of  Aristotle,  Pliny,  and  ^Elian,  the  latter  who 
wrote,  in  Greek,  a  "History  of  Animals,"  toward  the 
close  of  the  Second  Century.  Hardly  any  original  mat- 
ter was  added,  and  his  engravings  were  rude  and  unreli- 
able, being  regarded  now  more  in  the  light  of  objects  of 
curiosity  rather  than  any  value  being  attached  to  them 
as  positive  contributions  to  science. 

One  other  name  is  deserving  of  mention,  as  repre- 
senting this  period,  and  I  refer  to  that  laborious 
naturalist,  Ulysses  Aldrovani,  one  of  the  professors 
of  Bologna,  who  was  born  in  that  city,  in  1527,  and  died 
early  in  the  next  century.  He  was  of  noble  birth,  a 
zealous  collector,  and  published  some  works  upon  birds 
and  one  upon  insects.  Other  folio  volumes  appeared  after 
his  death.  He  was  a  builder  upon  the  lines  laid  down  by 
Gesner,  from  whom  he  borrowed  extensively,  although 
he  furthered  the  science  to  some  extent  by  his  own  obser- 
vations, thus  adding  his  mite  to  the  then  slowly  increas-  • 
ing  stock  of  human  knowledge  of  the  natural  sciences. 

So  much,  then,  for  the  progress  that  men  had  made  in 
those  subjects  at  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  cemury.  Anat- 
omy, in  so  far  as  it  took  into  consideration  the  structure 
of  man  and  the  vertebrates  below  him,  had  been  far 
more  fortunate  during  the  same  epoch.  In  the  Italian 
school,  strongest  at  Bologna,  it  grew  as  it  did  in  other 
countries  where  the  science  was  cultivated  out  of  the 
teachings  of  Galen.  Nevertheless,  Mondino,  a  teacher  in 
Bologna,  and  having  every  claim  to  being  the  father  of 
modern  anatomy,  as  early  as  1315  dissected  specimens  of 
the  human  subject  and  demonstrated  the  position  of 
many  structures  upon  the  bodies  of  two  females.  His 
descriptions,  however,  were  much  corrupted  by  ideas 
derived  from  the  Arabian  writers. 

A  most  zealous  promoter  of  anatomical  science  fol- 
lowed in  Italy  at  the  birth  of  the  Sixteenth  Century. 
This  was  James  Berenger,  who  declared  that  he  had  dis- 
sected during  his  career  over  one  hundred  human  bodies. 
He  most  assuredly  made  good  use  of  them,  for  his  contri- 
butions to  a  better  knowledge  of  the  anatomy  of  man 
were  of  the  most  substantial  character,  and  many  of  his 
descriptions  are  distinguished  for  their  great  accuracy 
and  minuteness.  As  compared  with  Italy,  France  made 
at  first  but  tardy  progress  in  anatomy,  and  a  hundred 


ON  BIOLOGY.  7 

years  after  Mondino  had  made  his  brilliant  demonstra- 
tions, direct  from  the  human  subject,  Dubois,  Fernei  and 
Etienne,  of  the  French  school,  were  still  almost  blindly 
following  the  ancient  writings  of  Galen,  and  using  only 
the  bodies  of  the  lower  animals  for  material.  But  what 
is  still  more  strange,  those  Frenchmen  were,  apparently, 
entirely  ignorant  of  all  the  excellent  work  that  had  been 
accomplished  by  their  Italian  predecessors  in  the  science. 

But  this  torpor  was  not  destined  to  remain  long  upon  a 
nation  which  subsequently  gave  birth  to  such  powerful 
lights,  both  in  natural  science  and  anatomy.  The  young 
Fleming,  Andrew  Vesalius,  was  the  first  to  enter  the 
French  arena,  and  throwing  off  the  Galenian  yoke,  about 
the  middle  of  the  Sixteenth  Century,  he  presented  the 
learned  world  with  a  truly  marvelous  work  upon  anatomy, 
his  dissections  being  all  original  and  made  both  upon 
men,  women,  children  and  the  lower  animals.  His  en- 
gravings were  exquisite,  and  he  at  once  rose  high  in  the 
estimation  of  his  cotemporaries.  The  labors  of  Versalius 
greatly  enhanced  the  claims  of  anatomy  to  a  science,  and 
those  claims  gained  a  still  firmer  foothold  through  the 
researches  along  the  same  lines  made  by  others  in  the 
school  of  Bologna  and  elsewhere,  in  Italy,  who  soon  fol- 
lowed him.  I  refer  to  the  brilliant  works  of  Bartholomeo 
Eustachi,  of  Columbus,  of  Fallopius,  of  Ingrassi^s,  of 
Aranzi,  of  Variolus,  and  of  Fabricius.  Spain  gave  us 
Servetus,  and  England,  the  immortal  Harvey,  about  this 
time. 

What  I  have  told  you  thus  far  about  the  growth  of  the 
natural  sciences  and  of  anatomy  will  serve  as  an  example 
to  show  how  other  sciences  grew  out  of  the  labors  of  the 
ancients,  and  came  to  be  what  they  were  in  the 
Sixteenth  Century.  The  career  of  physiology  was  more 
or  less  linked  to  that  of  anatomy,  while  botany  and  some 
of  the  other  departments  developed  much  in  the  same 
manner  as  did  the  last  named  science. 

The  dawn  of  better  days  had  now  appeared  in  Europe; 
human  knowledge  was  again  awakening  into  life;  the 
taste  for  learning  was  once  more  being  appreciated,  and  in 
defiance  of  persecution,  the  faggot  and  the  Inquisition, 
scientific  culture  had  taken  on  a  career  which,  in  all 
probability,  is  destined  not  to  be  checked  again  in  the 
history  of  humanity  in  time  to  come. 

Just  here  it  is  important  to  observe  the  interesting  fact, 
that  the  scientific  writers,  down  to  the  time  of  the  decline 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  rarely  or  never  confined  their  obser- 
vations to  any  single  department,  but,  on  the  contrary, 


8  LECTURES 

owing  to  the  then  limited  knowledge  of  the  age,  passed 
everything  known  to  their  time  in  such  fields  in  review. 
Aristotle  was  such  an  one  as  we  have  seen,  and  so  like- 
wise were  Pliny  the  Elder  and  Galen.  Practically  it  may 
be  said  they  employed  no  classification,  and  they  were 
ignorant  alike  of  the  mutual  affinities  and  relation  of 
things,  as  they  were  of  any  rational  scheme  of  the 
material  world. 

At  the  revival  of  learning  much  of  this  had  changed, 
and  notwithstanding  men  wrote  in  science  with  their 
minds  fettered  by  the  works  and  teachings  of  their  an- 
cient predecessors,  yet  a  decided  step  in  advance  had 
become  evident,  inasmuch  as  men  occasionally  confined 
themselves  to  special  departments,  such  as  zoology,  anat- 
omy, botany  and  the  like.  Zoologists,  as  we  have  seen, 
however,  consulted  Aristotle  far  more  often  than  they  did 
Nature,  and  anatomists  more  frequently  taught  from  the 
pages  of  Galen  than  they  did  from  the  only  safe  guide, 
the  human  cadaver,  upon  the  dissecting  table.  All  ex- 
isting forms  were  supposed  to  have  been  created  within  a 
comparatively  recent  time,  and  no  species  had  materially 
changed  since  the  date  of  that  creation.  Where  any 
notion  of  the  affinities  of  species  of  animals  inhabiting 
the  earth  existed  at  all,  such  notions  were  of  the  vaguest 
nature  imaginable.  Classification,  consequently,  in  their 
works  simply  resolved  itself  into  the  alphabetical  ar- 
rangement of  the  forms  described.  The  love  of  incorpo- 
rating into  works  of  science  descriptions  of  the  marvel- 
ous and  the  mythical  prevailed  almost  everywhere.  In 
those  times,  too,  man  was  studied  as  one 
thing  and  Nature  was  studied  as  another,  and 
the  two  were  considered  to  be  antagonistic  to  each  other; 
indeed,  a  sort  of  essential  antithesis  existed  between 
them,  which  even  in  those  early  days  of  history  gave  rise 
to  some  puzzling  speculations.  As  crude,  however,  as 
was  the  then  knowledge  of  Nature  and  the  material 
scheme  of  things,  the  foundations,  nevertheless,  had 
been  lain,  and  that,  too,  in  very  solid  masonry,  for  a 
more  or  less  systematic  gathering  of  facts.  That  struc- 
ture is  by  no  means  completed  at  the  present  time,  not- 
withstanding the  laborers  upon  it  have  been  increased 
many,  many  thousand  fold. 

Time  passed  on  and  the  number  of  those  who  were  in- 
terested in  the  various  sciences  gradually  increased.  In 
1651  Thomas  Hobbes  wrote:  "The  register  of  knowledge 
of  fact  is  called  history.  Whereof  there  be  two  sorts, 
one  called  natural  history,  which  is  the  history  of  such 


ON  BIOLOGY.  9 

facts  or  effects  of  Nature  as  have  no  dependence  on  man's 
will;  such  as  are  the  histories  of  metais,  plants,  animals, 
regions,  and  the  like.  The  other  is  civil  history,  which 
is  the  history  of  the  voluntary  actions  of  men  in  Com- 
monwealths." 

From  these  words  it  will  be  seen  that  at  least  one  good 
thinker  of  the  middle  of  the  Seventeenth  Century,  recog- 
nized the  distinction  between  what  soon  came  to  be  desig- 
nated as  natural  history,  and  civil  history.  A  few  years 
afterward,  when  Newton's  great  work,  the  "Principia," 
appeared,  other  lines  commenced  to  be  drawn,  and  It 
dawned  upon  men  that  certain  of  the  sciences  especially 
required  the  application  of  mathematics  in  their  treat- 
ment, as  was  the  case  in  physics,  astronomy,  and  other 
branches.  As  these  developed  they  naturally  became 
differentiated  from  those  which  took  into  consideration 
the  phenomena  of  Nature,  and  especially  demanded  the 
exercise  of  the  observational  powers  of  men.  Again,  other 
departments  of  human  knowledge  were  in  those  days 
arrayed  in  another  series,  depending  upon  the  fact  whether 
the  phenomena  they  presented  for  consideration  were  sus- 
ceptible of  explanation  or  were  dealt  with  by  experimental 
methods  or  fell  within  the  treatment  of  both.  Thus  the 
old  science  spoken  of  as  "natural  philosophy,"  was 
gradually  drawn  away  from  astronomy  and  chemistry 
began  to  occupy  a  field  of  its  own.  It  was  thus,  as  time 
went  on,  that  the  persons  designated  as  "naturalists" 
were  those  .  who  devoted  themselves  to  the  study  of  the 
history  of  plants  and  of  animals,  to  physical  geography, 
mineralogy  and  geology,  and  those  branches  were  con- 
sidered to  constitute  "natural  history."  As  thus  defined, 
however,  it  will  at  once  be  clear  to  you  that  natural 
history  meant  to  Aristotle  and  to  Buffon  two  widely 
different  things;  the  latter  understood  it  to  mean  pre- 
cisely what  I  have  just  given  you.  Indeed,  to  some  ex- 
tent, at  least,  the  meaning  which  Buffon  attached  to 
natural  history  has  endured  down  to  our  time,  and  no 
doubt  not  a  few  of  those  of  my  audience  can 
well  remember  in  their  boyhood  days  how  it 
fell  to  the  lot  of  one  of  the  professors  in 
college  to  assume  the  duties  of  the  Chair  of  Natural  His- 
tory, and  such  a  person  was  designated  as  the  Professor 
of  Natural  History,  and  essayed  to  instruct  his  class  in 
not  only  the  history  of  plants  and  animals  but  in  miner- 
alogy and  the  entire  field  of  geology  besides.  So  far  as  I 
am  aware,  we  never  hear  of  a  professor  of  natural  history 
in  any  of  the  leading  universities  or  colleges  of  this  coun- 


10  LECTURES 

try  at  the  present  day,  for  the  reason  that  the  marvelous 
progress  that  science  has  made  in  this  century  has  de- 
manded a  still  further  division  of  labor  in  such  fields. 
Gradually  both  geology  and  mineralogy  came  to  occupy 
their  own  legitimate  spheres,  and  the  geologists  and  the 
mineralogists  ceased  at  last  to  be  classed  with  the  natur- 
alists. 

Glancing  backward  again,  from  this  period,  we  find 
that  in  due  time  men  outgrew  the  practice  of  making 
mere  alphabetical  lists  of  the  animals  they  studied  and  re- 
cording random  notes  about  them.  Something  more  was 
demanded,  for  work  of  that  nature  could  not  always  sat- 
isfy the  orderly  and.  the  growing  mind  of  the  age.  It 
was  knowledge  to  be  sure,  but  it  was  not  classified  knowl- 
edge, nor  did  it  make  any  attempt  to  solve  the  relations  of 
the  things  described.  It  rapidly  began  to  dawn  upon 
men  that  there  were  but  few  forms  in  existence,  compar- 
atively, that  had  not  their  affines,  the  affinity  shown,  be- 
ing more  or  less  near.  For  example,  it  was  appreciated 
that  such  forms  as  the  wolf,  the  hyena,  the  fox,  and  the 
dog  were  in  some  way  or  the  other  related  to  each  other 
and  were  easily  distinguished  from  some  other  distinct 
group,  as  one  represented  by  the  lion,  the  tiger,  the  puma, 
the  cat,  the  ocelot,  and  so  on.  These  same  principles  be- 
came also  evident  in  botany,  and  were  duly  applied  there 
as  they  were  in  other  scientific  departments. 
Botany  showed  especial  early  development  owing 
to  its  relation  to  medicine,  and  the  additional 
inducement  to  study  it  to  that  end.  Many  of 
the  herbs  were  valuable  as  articles  of  the  materia 
medica,  and  early  in  the  Seventeenth  Century  the  number 
of  working  botanists,  it  is  said,  far  outnumbered  the 
zoologists.  Among  the  first  of  these  latter  who  resorted 
to  a  classification  of  the  forms  he  studied,  was  that 
erratic  Dutch  naturalist,  John  Swammerdam,  who 
was  born  at  Amsterdam  in  February,  1637. 
His  numerous  works  appeared  from  time  to 
time  during  the  latter  part  of  the  century  in  which  he 
lived.  His  methods  of  classification  were  best  seen  in  his 
entomological  researches,  and  it  will  at  once  be  observed 
by  those  at  all  familiar  with  the  subject  that  his  ideas 
in  those  premises  are  very  different  from  the  correspond- 
ing ones  entertained  by  those  engaged  in  the  classifi- 
cation of  insects  in  our  own  day.  Swammerdam  divided 
all  insects  into  four  classes,  based  upon  the  development 
of  the  various  kinds  as  understood  by  him.  He  took 
Into  consideration  the  condition  of  the  species  immedi- 


ON  BIOLOGY.  11 

ately  after  its  birth,  as  well  as  its  various  metamorphoses 
afterward. 

In  his  first  class  he  placed  the  spiders  and  other  species 
which  upon  hatching  have  a  form  more  or  less  like  the 
parent  form.  In  this  group  he  also  included  the  slugs, 
and  leeches,  which,  of  course,  are  not  insects  at  all.  A 
second  class  included  the  grasshoppers  and  their  kind,  or, 
as  he  points  out,  those  insects  which  have  six  feet  upon 
being  born  and  at  a  later  period  shed  that  covering  be- 
neath which  the  future  wings  are  hidden.  He  was 
also  struck  by  the  jumping  power  of  this  class.  Thirdly, 
he  had  a  class  for  the  caterpillars,  which,  as  we  know, 
are  hatched  as  worms  and  later  assume  the  various 
chrysalis  forms,  and  still  later  emerge  as  moths  and  but- 
terflies and  their  allies.  Lastly,  or  in  his  fourth  class, 
he  placed  such  insects  as  the  common  fly,  which  emerge 
as  worms  upon  hatching  from  the  egg,  and  later  assume 
a  pupa  stage  enveloped  in  an  investing  shell  of  their  own, 
which  protects  them  until  they  take  on  the  winged  state. 

Swammerdam  in  many  respects  was  a  remarkable  man; 
his  personal  history  forms  one  of  the  most  interesting 
pages  on  the  growth  and  development  of  zoological 
science.  Toward  the  close  of  his  life,  he  carried  his 
studies  to  such  an  excess  as  to  utterly  ruin  his  otherwise 
powerful  constitution;  he  then  became  a  fanatic  in  relig- 
ion, careless  of  his  work  and  its  results,  and,  finally,  died 
a  victim  apparently  of  melancholia  brought  on  by  his 
unhealthy  religious  broodings.  We  must  believe  that 
somewhat  earlier  in  his  life,  or  about  1674,  these  were 
much  aggravated  by  the  control  over  his  mind  which  had 
been  gained  by  that  notable  mystic,  Antoinette  Bourignon, 
a  woman  whose  religious  ideas  and  professions  were  by 
no  means  carried  out  in  her  daily  course  of  conduct. 

In  England,  Sir  Hans  Sloane  and  Jno.  Ray,  during  the 
latter  part  of  the  Seventeenth  and  early  part  of  the 
Eighteenth  Centuries,  accomplished  a  great 
deal  to  place  the  natural  sciences  upon  the 
most  substantial  footing.  Ray  especially  was  a 
very  learned  man,  and  a  voluminous  writer  upon  sub- 
jects connected  with  his  chosen  profession.  With  two  or 
three  favored  pupils  he  traveled  much  over  Europe,  and 
made  some  very  admirable  and  extensive  collections  in 
animals  and  plants,  which  were  brought  back  to  England 
to  be  worked  up  at  his  leisure.  Ray  also  did  much 
toward  classifying  the  forms  he  studied,  and  as  a  rule 
his  terse  and  classical  descriptions  were  excellent,  which 
same  favorable  criticism,  however,  cannot  be  extended  to 


12  [LECTURES 

his  figures  and  plates  which  illustrated  them.  We  musi 
remember,  though,  that  the  time  had  not  yet  arrived 
when  ease,  grace,  artistic  skill  and  accuracy  were  thrown 
into  zoological  illustrations.  In  birds,  the  world  had  to 
wait  for  Audubon  to  demonstrate  the  manner  in  which 
that  was  to  be  accomplished. 

Sir  Hans  Sloane,  who  was  born  in  Ireland  in  April, 
1660,  and  died  at  Chelsea  early  in  January,  1752,  was  a 
stanch  promoter  of  the  cause  of  science.  He  is  espe- 
cially to  be  remembered  as,  after  his  death,  his  enormous 
private  collections  of  objects  in  natural  history  formed 
the  nucleus  from  which  the  British  Museum  afterward 
developed  and  grew. 

The  year  1683  produced  also  a  remarkable  man  in 
France,  the  genius  of  whose  work  reaches  down  to  the 
present  time.  This  was  Rene  Antoine  Ferchault  de 
Reaumur,  a  man  who  not  only  greatly  advanced  the 
science  of  biology  but  in  addition  made  a  powerful  im- 
press upon  nearly  every  other  branch  of  learning  of  his 
day.  As  you  well  know  he  invented  an  admirable  scale 
for  one  of  the  styles  of  thermometers  still  in  use  in  many 
parts  of  the  world.  Reaumur  completed  and  published 
in  6  volumes  a  work  upon  insects,  and  left  several  others 
incomplete  and  unpublished,  which  is  very  much 
to  be  regretted  as  much  of  his  work  is  very  valuable. 
Some  of  his  philosophy  in  those  memoirs  would 
hardly  hold  good  at  the  present  day.  In 
speaking  of  insects,  he  says:  "The  number  of 
observations  necessary  for  a  tolerably  complete  history  of 
so  many  minute  animals  is  prodigious.  When  one  re- 
flects on  all  that  an  accomplished  botanist  ought  to  know, 
it  is  enough  to  frighten  him.  His  memory  is  loaded  with 
the  names  of  twelve  or  thirteen  thousand  plants,  and  he 
is  expected  to  be  able  to  recall  on  occasion  the  image  of 
any  one  of  them.  There  is,  perhaps,  none  of  these  plants 
that  has  not  insects  peculiar  to  itself;  and  some  trees, 
such  as  the  oak,  give  substance  to  several  hundreds  of 
different  species.  And,  after  all,  how  many  are  there 
that  do  not  live  on  plants!  How  many  species  that  de- 
vour others!  How  many  that  live  at  the  expense  of 
larger  animals,  on  which  they  feed  continually!  How 
many  species  are  there,  some  of  which  pass  the  greater 
part  of  their  time  in  water,  while  others  pass  it  entirely 
there!  The  immensity  of  Nature's  works  is  nowhere 
more  apparent  than  in  the  prodigious  multiplicity 
of  these  species  of  little  animals."  He  then 
proceeds  to  show  the  utter  impossibility  of  man  ever 


ON  BIOLOGY  13 

gaining  even  a  modicum  of  knowledge  of  a  subject  so 
vast,  and  argues  the  necessity  of  simply  knowing  the 
principal  genera  and  the  leading  or  characteristic  species 
in  each  genus.  He  adds:  "Although  we  would  greatly  re- 
strict the  limits  of  the  study,  there  are  persons  who  will 
think  them  still  too  wide;  there  are  even  some  who  con- 
sider all  knowledge  of  this  part  of  natural  history  as  use- 
less, and  who  unhesitatingly  pronounce  it  a  frivolous 
amusement.  We  are  equally  willing  that  these  pursuits 
should  be  regarded  as  amusements,  that  is,  as  studies 
which,  so  far  from  being  troublesome,  afford  pleasure  to 
the  person  who- engages  in  them.  They  do  more,  they 
necessarily  raise  the  mind  to  admire  the  Author  of  so 
many  wonders.  Ought  we  to  be  ashamed  of  ranking 
among  our  occupations  observation  and  researches,  of 
which  ihe  object  is  an  acquaintance  with  the  works  on 
which  the  Supreme  Being  has  displayed  a  boundless  wis- 
dom, and  varied  to  such  a  degree?  Natural  history  is 
the  history  of  his  works;  nor  is  there  any  demonstration 
of  his  existence  more  intelligible  to  all  men  than  that 
which  it  furnishes." 

It  is  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  ago  since  Reaumur 
published  these  views,  and  we  can  well  imagine  what  his 
surprise  would  be  were  it  possible  for  him  to  stand  in  our 
midst  to-day.  Not  only  have  the  botanists  since  his  time 
added  many,  many  thousands  of  new  species  of  plants  to 
the  lists,  but  the  entomologists  have  simply  increased  to 
an  enormous  extent  our  knowledge  of  the  insect  world. 
We  have  in  the  neighborhood  of  one  million  species 
described,  and  propose  to  describe  every  new  form  that 
comes  to  hand.  Nor  is  this  all,  for  the  structure  of  these 
minute  creatures  is  being  exhaustively  studied  in  all  direc- 
tions by  many  minds  and  many  microscopes;  their  habits 
are  being  closely  observed  and  recorded;  their  sex  varia- 
tions and  metamorphoses  determined;  the  insect  parasites 
upon  insects  and  uoon  other  animals  are  receiving  con- 
tinuously the  same  kind  of  study.  Out  of  all  this  work  is 
growing  an  enormous  literature,  but  more  than  that  the 
government  in  this  country  has  taken  the  matter  wisely 
in  hand,  and  an  annual  appropriation  supports  a  staff  of 
eminent  workers  who  constitute  our  Bureau  of  Economic 
Entomology,  and  I  am  quite  confident  that  even  Reau- 
mur, were  his  eyes  opened,  would  not  consider  their 
labors  in  the  light  of  a  "frivolous  amusement,"  and  we 
are  well  aware  that  the  highly  valuable  investigations  of 
the  staff  of  workers,  to  whom  reference  has  been  made,  is 
having  the  excellent  and  practical  result  of  being  of  the 


14  LECTURES 

utmost  importance  to  horticulturalists  the  world  over, 
wherever  their  works  have  come  known  and  appre- 
ciated. Moreover  their  published  accounts  of  the  habits 
and  development  of  insects  are  of  value  in  no  end  of  other 
ways,  and  explain  many  practical  and  theoretical  ques- 
tions. 

To  return  now  to  the  middle  of  the  Seventeenth  Cen- 
tury, we  find  that  meanwhile  an  ever-increasing  host  of 
workers  in  the  service  of  anotomy  have  attained  to  many 
glorious  results.  Through  the  labors  of  Asellius,  Glisson, 
Jolyffe,  the  Englishmen,  and  Rudbeck,  the  Swede  (the 
last  two  who  divided  honors  upon  the  distinction  between 
the  lacteals  and  the  lymphatics),  Willis,  who  carefully 
studied  the  nervous  system,  and  Malpighi,  who  devoted 
himself  principally  to  histology,  and  to  Steno,  Ruysch, 
Swammerdam,  who  has  already  been  noticed,  and  to  a 
hundred  others  the  very  refinements  of  anatomical  re- 
searches were  being  then  annually  published.  A  com- 
plete knowledge  of  man's  structure  was  rapidly  being 
gotten  at;  and,  what  is  fully  as  important,  a  very  general 
comparative  knowledge  of  the  morphology  of  many  other 
animals  was  likewise  having  a  powerful  light  thrown 
upon  it,  and  with  the  effect  of  very  materially 
elaborating  \vhat  was  already  known  in  such  fields. 
It  was  through  these  latter  studies,  supplemented  as 
they  were  by  the  descriptions  of  mammals  by  the  natural- 
ists of  the  time,  that  the  science  of  mammalogy  was  kept 
fully  abreast  the  other  departments  of  natural  history. 
Comparative  physiology,  ichthyology,  invertebrate 
zoology,  herpetology,  and  ornithology  were  also  advanced 
by  more  or  less  similar  methods,  though  no  one  of  them 
by  any  means  ever  in  the  same  degree.  Palaeontology,  or 
the  knowledge  of  the  fossil  remains  of  animals,  at  first 
grew  but  slowly,  and  it  has  only  been  within  the  last  fifty 
years  that  it  has  been  brought  up  into  line  with  the  other 
sciences,  as  they  are  understood  at  the  present  day,  and 
made  its  influence  most  powerfully  felt. 

By  the  middle  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  great  interest 
was  evidenced  in  travel  and  exploration,  and  many 
countries  were  being  explored  by  Europeans  prompted  by 
a  variety  of  motives.  Some  went  abroad  from  the  sheer 
love  of  adventure;  some  sought  wealth  and  fame; 
some  explored  in  the  interest  of  science  and 
geography;  while  others  made  up  the  sight- 
seers. It  all  tended,  however,  to  produce  in 
the  main  very  good  results  and  was  especially  favorable 
to  the  growth  of  all  the  natural  sciences.  One  very  im- 


ON  BIOLOGY.  15 

portant  branch  was  benefited  by  it,  and  one  that  hitherto 
had  not  been  much  developed,  and  that  was  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  geographical  distribution  of  animals,  a  most 
important  subject,  as  we  shall  hereafter  see.  Material 
now,  from  all  quarters  of  the  globe,  in  the  shape  of  plants, 
animals,  and  similar  objects  of  interest  came  in  abun- 
dance to  Europe,  where  it  poured  into  the  museums  or  en- 
riched the  collections  of  universities  or  those  of  private 
individuals. 

The  age  was  ripe  for  a  master  mind;  some  great,  all- 
absorbing  intellect  to  encompass  and  digest  this  incoming 
store  of  wealth;  to  arrange,  describe  and  classify  it  in  due 
and  orderly  manner;  in  that  it  might  come  to  be  a  true 
and  living  part  of  human  knowledge,  and  capable  of  be- 
ing comprehended,  made  useful,  studied  and  appreciated. 

When  Nature  is  prepared  to  inaugurate  another  epoch, 
•to  turn  over  as  it  were  another  page  in  the  history  of  the 
world,  it  would  seem  that  one  of  sufficient  strength  is  in- 
variably forthcoming  to  perform  the  operation,  and  such 
an  individual  arose  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  to 
do  the  realm  of  nature  that  service.  It  proved  to  be 
Carl  Von  Linne,  or,  as  he  is  better  known  to  English  ears, 
Charles  Linnaeus.  This  master  genius  was  born  at 
Rashult,  in  the  province  of  Smaland,  Sweden,  in  the 
latter  part  of  May,  1707,  and  the  term  of  his  life  spanned 
seventy-one  years.  Mr.  Jackson,  of  the  London  Linnaean 
Society,  tersely  expressed  the  influence  that  Linne's  per- 
sonal magnetism,  public  lectures,  teachings,  and  his  one 
hundred  and  eighty  published  books  and  papers  had 
upon  natural  science,  when  he  said:  "He  found  biology 
a  chaos;  he  left  it  a  cosmos."  With  him  classification 
was  a  passion,  and  the  description  of  natural  objects  a 
pastime  that  occupied  every  moment  of  his  thoughts. 
To  botany  he  gave  the  natural  system  of  classification,  or 
a  classification  based  upon  a  knowledge  of  the  structure 
of  plants,  their  flowers  and  fruits.  This,  his  original 
scheme,  has  come  down  to  us  through  a  century  and  a 
half  of  time,  in  practically  the  same  principle  as  when  it 
left  his  hands.  He  revolutionized  the  entire  system  of 
nomenclature  by  his  use  of  generic  and  specific  names 
and  by  the  employment  of  the  higher  groups  used  in 
taxonomy.  Linnaeus'  mind,  however,  appreciated  prob- 
ably little  or  nothing  of  what  a  species  really  is,  or  what 
species  are  now  known  to  be  in  the  light  of  modern  re- 
search. To  him  a  species  was  an  immutable  integer; 
when  once  found  and  properly  described  it  was  good  for 
all  time,  as  it  was  good  as  an  expression  of  what  that 


16  LECTURES 

form  had  been  since  It  came  into  existence  Genera  con- 
sisted in  groups  of  such  species,  defined  by  their 
generic  characters.  A'ca  impennis  was  one  species 
of  auk,  and  Alca  torda  another,  two  species 
of  auks  belonging  to  the  genus  Alca — or,  again,  in  mam- 
mals, we  find  the  order  Cete,  containing  the  whales; 
within  this  order  the  genus  Balcena,  created  for  the 
whales  proper,  of  which  he  duly  described  four  species. 
Such  simple  and  far-reaching  innovations;  such  effective 
machinery  made  itself  felt  in  comparatively  a  very  short 
space  of  time  in  every  biological  laboratory  and  study, 
either  public  or  private,  throughout  the  then  learned 
world. 

Linnseus's  greatest  achievement  was  his  "Systema 
Naturae,"  of  which  there  have  been  numerous  editions. 
In  it,  in  the  manner  I  have  described,  he  swept  over  and 
passed  in  review  in  orderly  classification  all  the  depart- 
ments of  natural  history  as  they  were  recognized  in  his 
time.  Its  publication  gave  an  enormous  impulse  to  the 
progress  of  science  along  the  lines  indicated.  But  this 
great  man  was  mortal,  and  he  possessed  the  failing  as  has 
every  naturalist  both  before  and  since  his  time,  of  making 
mistakes,  and  Linnaeus  made  a  great  many  of  them.  Mis- 
takes, however,  have  their  uses,  even  in  biology,  and 
from  their  correction  by  future  laborers  much  addi- 
tional information  and  research  is  apt  to  accrue.  The 
vast  majority  of  the  Linnsean  errors  have  been  rectified  in 
our  day.  Macgillivray,  who  has  written  a  very  good 
biography  of  the  immortal  Swede,  said:  "All  systems 
flourish  and  fade.  The  mineralogy  of  Linnaeus  has  per- 
ished; his  zoology,  cut  down  to  the  root,  has  sent  forth  a 
profusion  of  luxuriant  shoots;  and  although  his  botany 
maintains  as  yet  a  strong  claim  upon  the  admiration  of 
the  lovers  of  Nature,  a  fairer  plant  has  sprung  up  beside 
it  which  promises  a  richer  harvest  of  golden  fruits.  But 
should  the  period  ever  arrive  when  all  that  belonged  to 
him  of  mere  system  and  technicology  shall  be  obliterated, 
he  will  not  the  less  be  remembered  as  a  bright  luminary 
in  the  dark  hemisphere  of  natural  science,  which  served 
for  a  time  to  throw  a  useful  light  around,  and  led  ob- 
servers to  surer  paths  of  information  than  had  previously 
been  known." 

These  words,  from  the  pen  of  the  Scotch  naturalist, 
from  whom  I  have  quoted  them,  were  printed  in  1834. 
I  give  you  the  date  simply  to  show  the  trend  of  thought 
of  some  naturalists,  and  Macgillivray  was  a  good  one, 
over  fifty  years  ago,  upon  such  subjects. 


ON  BIOLOGY.  17 

We  must  not,  however,  measure  the  growth  of  the  nat- 
ural sciences  too  closely  by  the  arbitrary  scale  of  the  cen- 
tury, which  is  nothing  more  than  a  human  estimate 
invented  for  man's  convenience  in  reckoning  time.  Bi- 
ology has  been  a  natural  growth,  like  anything  else,  at 
times  being  rapid  and  luxuriant  and  again  sluggish  and 
uncertain,  but  ever  independent  of  either  B.  C.  or  A.  D., 
or  any  other  time-gauge  of  our  devising.  When  at  any 
stage  in  the  course  of  this  growth  it  received  into  its 
ranks  the  right  kind  of  recruits,  these  latter  came  pre- 
armed  with  the  knowledge  of  much  that  had  been  done 
before  their  joining;  and  in  taking  up  the  torches 
of  their  predecessors,  in  their  various  spheres  of  action, 
they  nearly  always  succeeded  in  still  further  illuminat- 
ing the  conquered  domain,  and  by  their  excursions  into 
the  unknown  added  additional  territory.  Very  often  the 
workers  along  some  line,  or  upon  a  number  of  lines,  have 
been  engaged  for  great  lengths  of  time  in  simply  gather- 
ing in  harvests  of  material  and  rendering  descriptive  ac- 
counts of  the  same.  Very  little  generalization  is  done; 
and  evidently  without  design  the  years  roll  by  for  a  time, 
and  the  entire  corps  of  the  world's  naturalists  appear  to 
have  run  Into  an  army  of  fact  gatherers.  Facts  are 
seized  up  and  accumulated  from  all  quarters,  and  are  of 
the  most  varied  nature.  Sometimes,  from  their  very 
remoteness  from  any  apparent  utilitarian  ends,  they  for 
the  time  have  been  regarded  by  many  as  practically  val- 
ueless; but  we  are  bravely  getting  over  such  views  of 
any  kind  of  true  knowledge,  for  our  experiences  are 
teaching  us  now  that  every  real  fact  discovered  and 
comprehended  far  from  being  useless  is  sure  some  day  to 
have  its  place  found  for  it  in  the  grand  structure  of 
human  understanding  of  the  scheme  of  the  universe. 
Frequently  such  facts  build  up  a  philosophy  for  one  age, 
which  is  more  than  likely  to  become  the  common  sense 
of  the  next  succeeding  one.  Explorers,  traders  in  foreign 
seas,  material  gatherers  and  the  describers  of  museum 
material,  zoological  artists  and  popular  writers  on  natural 
history,  together  with  here  and  there  occasionally  a 
stronger  hand  and  more  far  reaching  researches,  were  a 
long,  long  time  filling  the  biological  magazine  for  some 
great  digester  of  the  whole,  some  great  mind  and  hand  to 
sum  up  in  orderly  arrangement  the  grand  total  of  results 
attained;  to  make  an  epoch;  to  spread  a  broad,  solid  base 
for  the  succeeding  host  of  investigators  to  rest  upon.  We 
have  already  seen  how  a  Linnaeus  arose,  nearly  two  hun- 
dred years  ago,  as  the  transcendent  systematizer  of  the 


18  LECTURES 

great  mass  of  information  that  had  been  accumulating  to 
his  hand;  and  I  doubt  not  even  Aristotle,  the  ancient  sage 
of  the  peripatetic  school  in  Greece,  over  2,000  years  ago, 
had  his  material  and  fact;  and  we  may  add,  his  myth  col- 
lectors, whose  life  histories  dip  far  back  into  the  pre-tradi- 
tional  times  of  man's  career  upon  earth,  and  into  ages  of 
which  we  have  no  history. 

It  can  now  be  appreciated  that  ninety  odd  years  ago  an 
enormous  mass  of  material  and  facts  were  again,  and  had 
been,  accumulating  since  the  Linnaean  period;  and,  in 
half  a  century  thereafter,  a  Charles  Darwin  came  upon 
the  scene  to  handle  them  as  a  whole  and  in  due  course  to 
flash  to  the  world  their  significance. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  glance  at  some  of  the  work 
that  was  being  done  at  about  the  beginning  of  the  present 
century,  and  to  pass  in  review  some  of  the  ideas  enter- 
tained by  the  biological  writers  of  that  time.  It  was 
nearly  sixty  years  prior  to  the  appearance  of  Darwin's 
"Origin  of  Species,"  and  yet  Erasmus  Darwin,  his  dis- 
tinguished father,  in  his  very  interesting  work,  "The 
Temple  of  Nature,  or,  the  Origin  of  Society"  (a  copy  of 
which  I  have  in  my  library  and  which  was  published  in 
Baltimore,  in  IbOt),  says  in  the  first  Canto,  on  the  Pro- 
duction of  Life; 

"Organic  life  beneath  the  shoreless  waves 
Was  born,  and  nurs'd  in  Ocean's  pearly  caves; 
First  forms  minute,  unseen  by  spheric  glass, 
Move  on  the  mud,  or  pierce  the  watery  mass; 
These,  as  successive  generations  bloom, 
New  powers  acquire,  and  larger  limbs  assume; 
Whence  countless  groups  of  vegetation  spring, 
And  breathing  realms  of  fin,  and  feet,  and  wing." 

In  an  explanatory  footnote  to  these  lines  he  is  careful 
to  say:  "The  earth  was  originally  covered  with  water, 
as  appears  from  some  of  its  highest  mountains  consisting 
of  shells  connected  together  by  a  solution  of  part  of  them, 
as  the  limestone  rocks  of  the  Alps;"  (so  much  from 
"Ferber's  Travels,"  to  which  the  author  of  the  "Temple 
of  Nature"  adds:  "It  must  be  therefore  concluded  that 
animal  life  began  beneath  the  sea." 

It  is  unnecessary  to  point  out  in  this  place  the  double 
fallacy  in  this  theory,  for,  lhanks  to  our  geologists,  the 
knowledge  of  the  mode  of  the  formation  of  mountains  is 
now  well  understood,  and  the  occurrence  in  them  of 
marine  shells  easily  explained.  Still  Erasmus  Darwin's 
notions  of  the  origin  of  life  are  far  in  advance  of  the 


ON  BIOLOGY.  19 

ideas  of    John  Milton  on  the  same  subject  who  wrote  in 
his  "Paradise  Lost"  somewhere  about  1667, 

"The  sixth,  and  of  creation  last,  arose 

With  evening  harps  and  matin,  when  God  said, 

'Let  the  earth  bring  forth  soul  living  in  her  kind, 

Cattle  and  creeping  things,  and  beast  of  the  earth, 

Each  in  their  kind!'   The  earth  obeyed,  and,  straight 

Opening  her  fertile  womb,  teemed  at  a  birth 

Innumerous  living  creatures,  perfect  forms, 

Limbed  and  full  grown.     Out  of  the  ground  uprose, 

As  from  his  lair,  the  wild  beast,  where  he  wons 

In  forest  wild,  in  thicket,  brake  or  den; 

Among  the  trees  in  pairs  they  rose,  they  walked; 

The  cattle  in  the  fields  and  meadows  green; 

Those  rare  and  solitary;  these  in  flocks 

Pasturing  at  once,  and  in  broad  herds  upsprung. 

The  grassy  clods  now  calved;  now  half  appears 

The  tawny  lion,  pawing  to  get  free 

His  hinder  parts — then  springs,  as  broke  from  bonds, 

And  rampant  shakes  his  brinded  mane;  the  ounce, 

The  libbard,  and  the  tiger,  as  the  mole 

Rising,  the  crumbled  earth  above  them  threw 

In  hillocks;  the  swift  stag  from  underground 

Bore  up  his  branching  head;  scarce  from  his  mold 

Behometh,  biggest  born  of  earth,  upheaved 

His  vastness;  fleeced  the  flocks  and  bleating  rose 

As  plants;  ambiguous  between  sea  and  land, 

The  river-horse  and  scaly  crocodile, 

At  once  came  forth  whatever  creeps  the  ground, 

Insect  or  worm." 

I  have  already  told  you  that  it  was  about  1801,  the 
celebrated  French  naturalist,  Lamarck,  was  the  first  to 
use  the  word  Biology;  this  you  will  see  was  about  the 
time  that  Erasmus  Darwin  published  his  "Temple  of 
Nature;"  and,  Lamarck,  in  his  "Philosophic  Zoologique," 
remarks:  "Everything  which  Nature  has  caused  indi- 
viduals to  acquire  or  lose  by  the  influence  of  the  circum- 
stances to  which  their  race  is  long  exposed,  and,  conse- 
quently, by  the  influence  of  the  predominant  employment 
of  such  organ,  or  its  constant  disuse,  she  preserves  by 
generation  to  the  new  individuals  proceeding  from  them, 
provided  that  the  changes  are  common  to  the  two  sexes,  or 
to  those  which  have  produced  these  new  individual.'* 
(i,  235).  The  significance  of  these  words  must  be  clear  to 
all,  and  yet  they  were  written  nearly  sixty  years  before 
Charles  Darwin  published  his  "Origin  of  Species,"  and 


20  LECTURES 

very  well  show  the  trend  biologic  philosophy  was  takin  ? 
in  some  directions  at  the  very  beginning  of  the  present 
century. 

It  is  very  important  to  trace  back,  here  and  there  first 
glimmerings  as  light  that  illuminate  such  laws,  and  take 
cognizance  of  their  source,  for  the  idea  is  far  too  prev- 
alent, even  yet,  that  the  demonstration  of  the  origin  of 
organic  life  in  this  world  arose  in  any  one  man's  mind. 
That  demonstration  had  been  a  growing  one  for  many 
years  prior  to  1859,  and  has  come  up  in  the  same  way 
that  other  biologic  truths  have  come  up.  And,  in  this 
connection,  you  will  remember  that  even  as  early  as 
Cuvier's  time,  that  great  savant  wrote  of  the  eminent 
French  naturalist,  Buffon,  that  he  had  "the  merit  of  hav- 
ing been  the  first  to  point  out  clearly  that  the  actual  con- 
dition of  the  globe  is  the  result  of  a  succession  of  changes, 
of  which  we  can  find  the  evidences  to-day;  and  it  is  he 
who  first  drew  the  observation  of  all  investigators  to  the 
phenomena  by  which  these  changes  can  be  unraveled." 
Buffon's  work  on  natural  history  commenced  to  be 
put  forth  in  1749.  But  we  must  pass  again,  after  this 
momentary  digression,  to  those  biologists  who  wrote 
fifty  years  subsequent  to  the  date  I  have  just  mentioned. 
I  will  refer,  however,  to  but  a  few.  In  human  anatomy, 
works  comparable  with  the  modern  system  of  treating 
the  subject  appeared  first  rather  less  than  a  century  ago. 
The  second  or  German  edition,  of  the  work  on  anatomy,  by 
Sommering,inaugurated  a  new  era  in  this  branch  of  human 
knowledge,  for  that  eminent  authority  grasped  the  sub- 
ject in  a  most  masterly  manner,  and  his  published  labors 
are  characterized  by  marked  accuracy,  philosophical  ar- 
rangement, and  by  evidences  of  exhaustive  research.  In 
1801  the  French  philosopher,  Bichat,  brought  out  in  four 
octavo  volumes  an  equally  excellent  treatise  upon  human 
anatomy,  and  both  he  and  Sommering  greatly  advanced 
the  knowledge  of  physiology.  These  two  great  men 
were  the  center  lights  of  the  French  and  German  schools 
at  the  time  they  flourished.  About  each  were  workers 
in  the  two  countries  of  scarcely  less  celebrity,  while  in 
Great  Britain  John  Gordon,  Bell,  the  third  Munro,  Jones, 
Quain,  and  others  carried  the  subject  fully  up  to  the 
time.  Great  precision  was  now  being  gained  by  the  use 
of  the  microscope  and  other  instruments  ensuring  more 
accurate  results  in  dissecting.  Means  of  more  extensive 
criticism  and  reviews  reacted  most  beneficially,  and 
many  special  treatises  rapidly  appeared  in  Germany, 


ON  BIOLOGY.  21 

England,  France,  Italy,  and  elsewhere  on  the  continent 
In  wonderful  profusion. 

Morphology  of  vertebrates,  other  than  man,  was  also 
advanced  most  satisfactorily,  and  during  the  first  thirty 
years  of  this  century  a  comprehension  of  the  structure, 
organization,  physiology  and  composition  of  all  organic 
forms  was  fairly  established,  and  as  the  years  swept  by 
they  were  marked  by  an  ever-increasing  host  of  investi- 
gators of  all  those  departments,  and  by  a  most  remark- 
able giving-to-the-world  of  a  perfect  flood  of  literature 
upon  every  branch  of  biology;  not  only  those  I 
have  just  mentioned  but  also  botany,  palaeontology, 
invertebrate  zoology,  man  and  all  that  refers  to  or  con- 
cerns him,  pathology  and  psychology.  This  great  wave 
of  intellectual  activity  swells  up  to  the  present  hour 
with  a  powerful  augmentation  of  its  force,  propelled  as  it 
is  by  the  minds  of  an  army  of  restless  investigators,  that 
annually  enlist  a  greater  and  a  greater  number  of  re- 
cruits. So  long,  indeed,  is  this  list  of  honored  names, 
that  even  to  mention  those  who  have  distinguished  them- 
selves in  the  various  departments  of  biology  during  the 
time  since  the  commencement  of  the  present  century 
would  be  absolutely  impracticable,  as  that  list,  with 
even  a  reference  to  the  principal  works  in  each  case, 
would  fill  several  goodly  volumes. 

What  have  been  some  of  the  results  of  all  this  study 
and  investigation?  They  are  not  far  to  seek,  but,  as  it 
is  my  intention  to  revert  to  some  of  them  more  fully  later 
in  the  present  course  of  lectures,  only  a  few  of 
the  main  ones  will  be  named  in  this  connec- 
tion. We  saw  that  early  in  the  history  of  the 
biological  sciences  men  but  very  slightly  appreciated 
either  the  unity  of  organization  as  it  exists  among  plants 
on  the  one  hand,  and  animals  on  the  other,  or  were 
they  scarcely  at  all  aware  of  the  mutual  relations  of  the 
biological  sciences.  Now  modern  science  and  research, 
in  the  first  place,  has  brought  about  a  very  thorough  real- 
ization of  the  interdependence  of  her  various  natural 
divisions;  and  in  the  second  place,  the  general  uniformity 
in  the  plan  of  structure  of  all  animated  beings  is  now 
well  known. 

Palaeontology  and  the  microscope  are  largely  respon- 
sible for  these  results;  the  former  demonstrating  the  rela- 
tions of  living  things  in  geologic  time,  and  the  latter  bring- 
ing to  light  the  agreement  in  kind  of  the  few  elements 
or  tissues  throughout  animated  nature  and  out  of  which 
all  organic  forms  are  composed  and  built  up. 


22  '   •   •  LECTURES 

Attention  was  first  turned  toward  the  question 
of  the  unity  of  plan  in  the  case  of  the  verte- 
brata  by  the  poet  Goethe,  who,  early  in  the  present  cen- 
tury pointed  out  the  fact  that  the'premaxillary  bone  or 
that  element  of  the  skull  which  supports  the  upper 
incisor  teeth,  occurring,  as  it  probably  does  in  all  back- 
boned animals,  should  occur  in  man.  This  he  finally 
demonstrated  to  be  true,  and  its  demonstration,  taken  in 
connection  with  the  theory  of  Oken  on  the  vertebrated 
nature  of  the  entire  skull,  a  lecture  given  by  that  trans- 
cendent anatomist  at  a  time  when  Goethe  was  present, 
turned  the  attention  of  all  leading  anatomists  of  the 
time  to  making  comparative  studies  of  animals,  often 
with  the  view  of  elucidating  some  obscure  structure  in 
the  organization  of  man.  Since  the  time  of  which  I 
speak  comparative  morphologists  have  made,  without 
any  exaggeration,  thousands  upon  thousands  of  such  com- 
parisons, and  the  truth  of  the  unity  of  plan  of  structure 
among  the  vertebrata  is  as  well  established  as  is  the  form 
of  the  earth.  Botanists  find  that  essentially  the  same  holds 
true  in  the  vegetable  world.  So  that  were  one  to  fully 
study  any  single  well-chosen  plant,  in  all 
its  details,  he  would  practically  possess  the 
key  to  the  knowledge  of  the  morphology 
of  plants,  both  living  and  extinct.  So  also  for  the 
physiology  of  plants;  so  also  for  the  physiology  of  animals, 
a  full  comprehension  of  physiologic  laws,  as  exemplified 
in  a  tortoise,  are  found  to  obtain  with  the  same  exactitude 
in  an  elephant.  In  other  words  it  has  come  to  be  known 
that  certain  broad  laws  concerning  such  matters  possess  a 
general  application  throughout  both  the  vegetable  and 
animal  kingdom. 

Another  great  subject  has  come  to  be  very  largely 
understood  through  the  labors  of  the  biologists  of  this 
century,  and  that  is  the  geographical  distribution  of 
plants  and  animals,  both  for  those  now  existing  and  for 
those  which  existed  during  former  ages  of  the  world  but 
are  now  extinct.  This  is  a  very  important  field  as  we 
shall  hereafter  see. 

Still  another  vast  problem  of  prime  importance  has 
been  elaborated  within  the  last  hundred  years,  and 
to  it  the  millions  of  facts  drawn  from  all  departments 
of  biology  lend  substantial  support.  I  refer  to  the 
doctrine  of  the  generation  of  living  beinars;  the  prob- 
able origin  of  life  upon  the  globe;  the  development  of 
the  individual,  the  development  of  the  triba;  the  history 
of  animals  and  plants  throughout  all  time;  and,  finally,  a 


ON  BIOLOGY.  23 

very  general  comprehension  of  the  laws  and  factors  of 
this  doctrine  considered  in  its  entirety.  When  we  come 
to  search  for  the  physical  basis  in  the  economy  of  any 
living  thing  in  the  whole  world,  it  invariably  results  in 
the  discovery  of  an  apparently  structureless  mass,  to 
which  the  name  of  protoplasm  has  been  given.  This 
fundamental  form  of  all  life;  this  morphological  unit  is 
the  material,  in  so  far  as  our  present  knowledge  carries 
us,  from  which  every  organ,  however  complex  or  how- 
ever high  in  the  scale  of  organization  in  either  the  animal 
or  vegetable  kingdom,  is  built  up.  Among  some  of  the 
lowest  forms  of  existing  life  we  find  that,  structurally, 
they  are  but  slightly  advanced  beyond  this  protoplasmic 
matter;  whereas  in  man  or  any  other  complex  animal, 
his  system  is  found  to  be  made  up  of 
organs  and  tissues,  which  organs  and  tis- 
sues are  in  turn  found  to  be  simply  an  aggregation  of 
protoplasmic  cells,  that  present  various  modifications  in 
form,  which  latter  takes  on  an  internal  structureless 
part  and  an  external  part  which  appears  to  be  more  defi- 
nitely constituted.  Further,  it  is  apparent  that  this  liv- 
ing matter,  considered  in  its  simple  state,  holds  a  definite 
position  in  space  and  in  time;  it  may  be  acted  upon  by 
certain  forces,  which  result  in  the  production  in  it  of  cer- 
tain internal  changes  or  causes  it  to  modify  external  ob- 
jects, which  in  turn  may  modify  it.  So  that,  finally,  its 
very  form,  or  the  place  it  occupies,  or  what  it  is  capable 
of  doing  are  controlled  by  the  effects  of  certain  causes. 

Our  ablest  biologists  then  subdivide  the  entire  subject 
of  biology  into  four  parts,  that  is,  into  morphology,  dis- 
tribution, physiology  and  aetiology. 

As  I  have  already  pointed  out,  under  morphology  we 
take  into  consideration  both  the  minute  and  gross  anat- 
omy of  all  living  forms,  together  with  their  development. 
Such  knowledge  is  made  comparative,  and  taxonomy  or 
classification  flows  from  it  as  a  natural  result. 

Under  distribution  we  arrange  all  the  facts  that  bear 
upon  the  occurrence  of  living  forms  over  the  surface  of 
the  globe,  and  the  laws  that  appear  to  govern  it,  as  well 
as  the  geographical  occurrence  of  animals  and  plants 
during  former  geological  epochs  of  the  earth's  history. 
Under  physiology  we  have  to  deal  with  the  functions 
of  living  matter  as  seen  in  the  representatives  of  the  animal 
and  vegetable  worlds,  of  the  function  of  an  organ  of  any 
living  thing  as  a  whole,  and  the  functions  of  the  mor- 
phological units  or  cells  of  which  any  living  thing  is 
composed.  Secondly,  of  the  various  modes  of  reproduo- 


24  LECTURES 

tion  of  animals  and  plants,  and  the  laws  that  control 
their  existence.  Thirdly,  of  the  question  of  the  hered- 
itary transmission  of  characters  and  the  laws  that 
operate  in  producing  variation  in  those  characters,  both 
in  consecutive  and  non-consecutive  generations. 
Psychology  and  sociology  are  also  legitimate  branches  of 
this  subdivison. 

Finally,  under  aetiology  we  are  concerned  with  the 
questions  of,  first,  the  probable  origin  of  life  upon  the 
earth,  and  with  the  causes  of  the  phenomena  of  the 
same.  In  the  second  place,  with  the  causes  of  the  vari- 
ations presented  on  the  part  of  animals- and  plants  in 
time,  as  well  as  the  history  and  causes  of  the  evolvement 
of  living  forms  and  the  laws  pertaining  thereto.  The 
phenomena  of  morphology,  physiology,  and  distribution 
are  based  upon  known  facts,  whereas  much  that  aetiology 
has  to  do  with,  is  speculative,  though  often  amounting 
to  a  degree  of  probability  bordering  upon  absolute  cer- 
tainty, inasmuch  as  it  is  in  complete  harmony  with  and 
renders  full  explanation  of  many  of  the  known  phenom- 
ena of  the  three  first-mentioned  grand  subdivisions  of 
biology. 

Thus  you  will  see  how  our  science  has  grown  and  de- 
veloped, and  the  manner  in  which  the  subject  presents 
itself  to  the  minds  of  the  best  interpreters  of  Nature 
to-day,  and  how  the  problems  concerning  life  itself  are 
regarded. 

Upon  the  next  occasion  of  our  meeting  I  will  endeavor 
to  lay  before  you  the  evidence  we  possess  bearing  upon 
the  question  of  the  relation  of  biology  to  geology.  And 
in  doing  so  I  shall  select  the  vertebrata  as  the  group 
wherewith  to  point  out  that  relationship,  at  the  same 
time  fully  assuring  you  that  the  facts  we  will  have  to 
deal  with  hold  true  in  principle  for  the  invertebrata  as 
they  likewise  do  for  the  entire  vegetable  kingdom.  It 
would  be  impossible  in  the  short  space  of  time  represent- 
ed by  one  of  our  lectures  to  deal  with  this  subject  by 
attempting  to  demonstrate  the  bearing  of  the  entire 
animal  and  vegetable  worlds,  as  they  now  exist  upon  the 
face  of  the  earth,  to  the  science  of  geology,  for  the  range 
is  far  too  wide;  and,  as  I  have  first  said,  essentially  the 
same  laws  obtain  throughout.  Although  I  had  not  the 
pleasure,  last  year,  of  attending  the  lecture  given  you  by 
Prof.  Lester  F.  Ward,  upon  palaeobotany,  I  feel  quite 
sure  he  must  at  that  time  have  had  not  a  little  to  say 
respecting  the  affinities  existing  among  the  various 
modern  florae  and  those  fossil  plants  which  have  been 


ON  BIOLOGY.  25 

discovered  from  time  to  time  in  the  various  geologic 
horizons  making  up  the  crust  of  the  earth.  This  is 
especially  fortunate  inasmuch  as  that  aspect  of  the  sub- 
ject has  thas  been  brought  before  you  by  one  of  the 
most  able  of  all  living  polaeobotanists,  as  it  does  at  the 
same  time  relieve  me  of  the  necessity  of  passing  into 
similar  fields  for  facts  for  my  next  lecture,  e'en  had  I 
the  ability  to  present  the  matter  with  that  lucidity  and 
breadth  that  I  have  no  manner  of  doubt  was  done  for  you 
by  Prof.  Ward. 

Finally,  to  those  who  may  be  especially  interested  in 
the  present  course  of  lectures  and  at  the  same  time  con- 
sider themselves  to  be  but  tyros  in  the  science  of  biology, 
and  desire  by  their  reading  to  look  into  the  subject  of 
each  succeeding  lecture,  prior  to  my  delivering  it,  I 
would  say  that  in  considering  the  relation  of  biology  to 
geology  we  will  also  take  into  consderation  the  question 
of  the  geographical  distribution  of  many  of  the  groups 
of  the  world's  existing  vertebrata,  as  that  is  a  matter  of 
prime  importance  to  be  dealt  with,  to  the  end  that  we 
may  attain  to  an  understanding  of  the  subject  in  chief. 


II. 

Its  Relations  to  Geology. 


As  stated  in  my  last  lecture,  to  arrive  at  anything  like 
a  fair  comprehension  of  the  relations  of  biology  to  geol- 
ogy, we  must  first  gain  some  general  understanding  of 
the  question  of  the  geographical  distribution  of  existing 
forms  of  life.  It  was  also  pointed  out  that  in  order  to 
be  enabled  to  enter  upon  this  important  subject  with  any 
degree  of  thoroughness  at  all,  it  would  become  necessary 
to  limit  ourselves  to  some  one  of  the  great  branches  of 
the  animal  kingdom,  and  through  it  seek  to  illustrate  the 
main  facts,  as  they  are  now  known  to  biologists,  which 
pertain  to  the  matter  of  the  distribution  of  animals  and 
plants  over  the  face  of  the  globe.  For  this  purpose  the 
vertebrata  offer  us  as  useful  a  group  as  any  one  thai 
could  be  selected.  The  vertebrata,  as  you  know,  is  that 
most  important  branch  of  the  animal  kingdom  which 
includes  all  the  back-boned  animals,  or  the  mammals, 
birds,  reptiles,  batrachians,  fishes  and  the  like;  and  from 
all  these  the  distinguished  British  zoogeographer,  Mr.  A. 
R.  Wallace,  chose  the  first  class  or  the  mammalia  from 
which  to  deduce  the  principles  of  the  science  of  zoogeo- 
graphy. Upon  applying  these  principles  to  other  great 
groups  of  animals  and  to  plants  it  has  been  found  that  in 
the  main  they  are  in  ha-mony  with  them,  and  where 
decided  exceptions  exist  they  serve  to  explain  questions 
that  would  otherwise  be  in  doubt. 

Now  zoogeography  is  a  scheme  by  means  of  which  we 
can  classify  our  knowledge  of  animal  distribution  and  in 
an  orderly  manner  present  it  to  the  mind  so  that  it  can  be 
easily  appreciated.  Many  scientists  have  devoted  years 
of  study  to  this  subject  alone,  and  among  them  we  must 
not  neglect  to  mention,  in  addition  to  Mr.  Wal- 
lace, already  referred  to,  the  names  of  Buffon,  the 
eminent  French  biologist,  Agassiz,  Allen,  Gill,  of  this 
country,  Sclater  of  London,  and  Alexander  Yon 
Humboldt.  In  the  present  connection,  however,  it 


28  LECTURES 

will  meet  my  purpose  very  well  to  adopt  the 
views  in  the  premises  as  so  ably  set  forth  by  Mr.  Wallace. 
As  is  the  case  with  other  departments  of  science,  zoo- 
geography has  grown  up  from  early  and  crude  notions 
of  its  principles  to  its  now  largely  elaborated  state. 
With  respect  to  the  occurrence  of  animal  and  plant  life 
over  the  face  of  the  earth,  most  of  our  American  zoolo- 
gists divide  the  land  and  water  areas  into  divisions  in 
chief  which  they  term  "realms,"  while  our  British  con- 
freres give  the  name  of  "regions"  to  those  areas.  But 
before  giving  the  names  of  the  zoogeographical  regions 
of  Wallace,  I  wish  to  bring  before  you  some  of  the  gen- 
eral facts  in  reference  to  animal  distribution.  In  speak- 
ing of  the  characteristic  forms  of  animal  life  of  any  part 
of  the  world's  land  or  water  areas,  we  refer  to  it  as  the 
fauna  of  that  part,  as  in  making  reference  to  its  plants 
we  speak  of  them  as  ihe flora  of  the  same  or  other  parts. 
We  also  use  special  names  to  designate  what  classes  or 
groups  of  classes  of  animals  we  may  have  independently 
under  consideration,  as,  for  example,  the  birds  of  any 
district  are  referred  to  as  the  avifauna  of  that  district, 
as,  are  the  fishes  of  any  special  body  of  water  as  its  pisci- 
fauna.  Elsewhere  I  have  made  use  of  the  convenient 
term  anthropofauna  in  allusion  to  the  race  or  races  of 
men  that  occur  in  any  region,  and  similar  words  for 
other  groups  will  readily  suggest  themselves  to  you. 

Now  it  is  a  well-known  fact  that  certain  classes  of 
animals  are  practically  confined  to  the  dry  land,  while 
others  are  inhabitants  of  the  fresh  water,  and  still  others 
of  the  salt  water;  and,  lastly,  some  are  common  both  to 
waters  that  are  salt  and  to  waters  that  are  fresh.  These 
various  kinds  not  only  differ,  but  still  another  difference 
is  to  be  observed  in  any  given  locality  when  we  either 
gradually  ascend  or  descend;  that  is  to  say,  the  flori  and 
fauna  at  the  base  of  a  mountain  are  usually  very  differ- 
ent from  the  flora  and  fauna  at  different  elevations 
on  the  side  of  the  mountain;  and  the  same  holds 
true  for  the  animals  found  at  various  depths 
in  the  ocean  or  great  fresh  water  lakes.  Again,  divers 
latitudes,  characterized  by  different  climates,  have  also 
their  characteristic  assemblages  of  plants  and  animals, 
and  even  in  different  longitudes,  where  the  climates  may 
be  almost  identically  the  same,  the  living  populations  are 
again  found  to  be  dissimilar. 

Not  only  do  differences  of  latitude  and  longitude,  dif- 
ferences of  climate,  elevation  and  depths  in  the  water 
influence  the  kinds  of  animals  and  plants  found  in  those 


ON  BIOLOGY.  29 

various  parts  of  the  world,  but  the  diversity  in  the  physi- 
cal geography  of  the  earth's  surface  is  another  powerful 
factor  in  determining  faunal  and  floral  limits.  Plains 
may  encourage  extended  migrations,  as  do  hills,  moun- 
tains, large  rivers  and  seas  check  the  same.  The  abun- 
dance or  absence  and  scarcity  of  certain  foods  over  certain 
areas  also  have  an  Influence.  In  many  cases  the  faunal 
limits  can  be  but  loosely  defined,  as  any  faunal  district 
may  almost  imperceptibly  merge  into  any  one  of  its  ad- 
joining ones,  but  certain  surface  contours  may  often,  on 
the  other  hand,  sharply  define  some  of  the  boundaries, 
and  animals  of  the  contiguous  areas  not  pass  over  the 
line.  Some  species  range  through  several  faunal  areas, 
others  are  never  found  beyond,  perhaps,  some  quite  lim- 
ited locality,  these  several  restrictions  and  diffusions 
nearly  always  being  due  to  assignable  natural  causes. 
Where  certain  species  arrive  at  their  maximum  of 
abundance  it  is  generally  supposed  to  indicate  the  area  of 
the  origination  of  that  species. 

Soils  also  play  their  part,  and  it  will  be  clear  that  the 
fauna  of  extensive  marshy  districts  are  sure  to  be  quite 
unlike  the  fauna  of  a  great  desert;  indeed,  in  the  case  of 
the  latter,  it  has  led  an  eminent  authority  to  say  that 
"deserts  may  act  much  as  inland  seas  to  separate  the  ani- 
mals of  the  adjoining  more  fertile  tracts,  and  they  afford 
dwelling-places  for  animals  which  are  incapable  of  living 
elsewhere.  Desert  faunae  have  a  general  fades  the  world 
over,  though  the  original  elements  out  of  which  the 
faunae  have  been  made  up  may  radically  differ." 

Although  a  great  ocean,  such  as  the  Pacific  or  the 
Atlantic,  forms  almost  a  positive  barrier  to  the  spread  of 
the  land  animals  of  its  opposite  coasis,  which  are  in- 
variably quite  distinct,  yet  at  the  same  time,  within  its 
own  self,  the  great  ocean  currents  form  means  of  dispersal 
of  prime  importance  for  many  land  animals  and  the  vast 
majority  of  marine  forms.  Again,  as  we  have  already 
pointed  out,  climate  in  most  cases  is  a  positive  barrier  to 
the  spread  of  animals  in  many  directions,  whereas  the 
alternation  of  the  seasons,  and  even  the  severity  or  mild- 
ness of  the  Summers  and  Winters  powerfully  urge  many 
animals  to  migrate,  and  thus  for  the  time  being,  at  least, 
to  pass  beyond  either  their  local  or  general  faunal  areas. 
Migrations  from  such  causes,  in  the  main,  however,  take 
place  within  the  boundary  of  any  faunal  region  where 
they  occur.  A  familiar  example  of  this  is  our  own 
United  States  vernal  and  autumnal  migration  of  birds 


30  LECTURES 

which  takes  place  every  year,  and  that  for  the  entire 
width  and  breadth  of  the  continent. 

As  another  means  of  the  dispersal  of  animals  we  have 
those  various  movements  which  take  place  in  the  atmos- 
phere itself,  and  it  has  been  noted  that  the  trade  winds, 
hurricanes  and  cyclones,  or  even  the  minor  whirlwinds 
do  much  sometimes  toward  scattering  the  lighter  forms 
of  animal  life  as  well  as  the  seeds  of  many  plants,  and  by 
such  means  new  organisms  are  often  transported  to 
distant  faunal  areas  to  which  they  were  formerly  un- 
known. In  any  special  case,  should  the  environment 
prove  compatible  to  a  species  thus  violently  introduced, 
that  species  may  become  established  and  thrive  in  the 
new  region,  or  it  may,  the  reverse  holding  true,  become 
gradually  extinct,  or  even  may  perish  at  once. 

Q.uite  a  number  of  artificial  means,  introduced  by  man, 
himself,  have  from  time  to  time  acted  as  factors  in  either 
favoring  the  dispersal  of  certain  animals  or  tending  to 
restrict  them  to  certain  localities.  Bridging  large 
streams,  the  transportation  of  many  of  the  smaller  forms 
in  steamers,  grain  cars,  trains,  and  other  modes  of  con- 
veyance; the  joining  of  large  bodies  of  water  by  means  of 
the  opening  of  artificial  canals;  and  finally,  even  the  con- 
struction of  country  roads  have  all  had  their  influence 
along  the  lines  indicated. 

Anticipating  for  the  moment  the  discussion  of  the  main 
subject  of  our  lecture,  we  mav  say  here  that  the  dispersal 
and  rearrangement  of  faunae  and  floras  in  past  ages  of  the 
world,  have  been  powerfully  affected  by  geologic  changes; 
as,  for  example,  the  effects  produced  by  the  glacial 
period  as  a  whole,  as  well  as  those  profounder  changes — 
the  upheavals,  depressions  and  submergences  of  conti- 
nental margins  and  areas.  It  must  be  borne  well  in  mind 
that  at  the  present  time  the  faunae  and  florae  of  the  various 
zoogeographic  legions  are  continuously  but  gradually 
undergoing  many  changes,  brought  about  by  the  ex- 
termination of  some  forms,  by  the  slow  development  of 
new  species,  and  by  the  gradual  physical  changes  of  the 
earth  characteristic  of  the  present  epoch. 

To  sum  them  up,  we  may  say,  in  tne  words  of.  Huxley: 
"It  has  been  discovered  by  careful  comparison  of  local 
faunae  and  florae  that  certain  areas  of  the  earth's  surface 
are  inhabited  by  groups  of  animals  and  plants  which  are 
not  found  elsewhere,  and  which  thus  characterize  each 
of  these  areas.1' 

We  are  now  in  position  to  return  to  the  naming  of  those 
areas,  and  as  we  have  already  said,  the  views  of  Mr.  Wai- 


ON  BIOLOGY.  31 

lace  will  receive  our  attention  in  the  premises.  It  was  in 
1876  when  Wallace  published  the  work  containing  his 
scheme,  and  he  then  recognized  six  primary  zoogeo- 
graphical  regions  of  the  globe,  and  subdivided  them  as 
follows: 

I.  Palaearctic  region,  with  four  sub-regions:  (1)  North 
Europe.    (2)     Mediterranean,     or      South     Europe.     (3) 
Siberia.  (4)  Manchuria,  or  Japan. 

II.  Ethiopian    region,      with    four    sub-regions:      (1 
East  Africa.     (2)  West  Africa.     (3)  South  Africa.     (4 
Madagascar. 

III.  Oriental  region,  with  four  sub-regions:    (1)    Hin- 
dostan,  or  Central   India.     (2)  Ceylon.     (3)    Indo-China, 
or  Himalayas.     (4)  Indo-Malaya. 

IV.  Australian  region,   with    four    sub-regions:      (1) 
Austro-Malaya.        (2)    Australia.      (3)    Polynesia.      (4) 
New  Zealand. 

V.  Neotropical    region,    with    four    sub-regions:    (1) 
Chili,   or    South   Temperate  America.     (2)    Brazil.     (3) 
Mexico,  or  Tropical   North  America.     (4)  Antilles. 

VI.  Nearctic  region,  with  four  sub-regions:     (1)  Cali- 
fornia.   (2)  Rocky  Mountains.     (3)    Alleganies,   or   East 
United  States.     (4)  Canada. 

As  has  already  been  intimated,  these  regions  are  prac- 
tically independent  of  the  question  of  the  marine  distri- 
bution of  animals.  But  the  principles  which  apply  to 
zoo-oceanic  areas  and  regions  are,  in  the  main,  almost 
identical  with  those  laws  which  govern  the  occurrence  of 
the  life-forms  in  the  terrestrial  zoogeographical  divisions. 
So  that,  for  our  present  purpose,  they  need  not  be  espe- 
cially discussed  here. 

With  respect  to  the  terrestrial  divisions  just  given,  and 
using  Mr.  Wallace's  own  words,  we  are  to  note  that  the 
"I.  Palaearctic  Region,  which  includes  all  Europe  to  the 
Azores  and  Iceland,  all  temperate  Asia  from  the  high 
Himalayas  and  west  of  the  Indus,  with  Japan,  and  China 
from  Ningpo  and  to  the  north  of  the  watershed  of  the 
Yang-tse-Kiang;  also  North  Africa  and  Arabia,  to  about 
the  line  of  the  tropic  of  Cancer.  This,  may  be  popularly 
called  the  European  region,  Europe  being  the  richest  and 
most  varied  portion  of  it  and  containing  representatives 
of  all  the  more  important  types;  but  it  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that  the  region  includes  a  much  larger  area  in 
Asia,  and  that  there  are  many  peculiar  North  Asiatic 
animals. 

"II.  The  Ethiopian  Region,  which  includes  all  Africa 
south  of  the  tropic  of  Cancer,  as  well  as  the  southern 


32  LECTURES 

part  of  Arabia,  with  Madagascar  and  the  adjacent 
islands.  It  may  be  popularly  termed  the  African  region. 

"III.  The  Oriental  region,  which  is  comparatively 
small,  including  India  and  Ceylon,  the  Indo-Chinese 
countries  and  southern  China,  and  the  Malay  Archipel- 
ago as  far  as  the  Phillipines,  Borneo  and  Java.  It  may 
be  popularly  called  the  South  Asiatic  or  Indian  region. 

"IV.  The  Australian  Region,  which  is  composed  of 
the  remainder  of  the  Malay  Archipelago,  Australia,  New 
Zealand,  and  all  the  tropical  islands  of  the  Pacific,  as  far 
east  as  the  Marquesas  and  the  Low  Archipelago. 

"V.  The  Neotropical  Region,  which"  comprises  the 
whole  of  South  America  and  the  adjacent  islands,  the 
West  Indies  or  Antilles,  and  the  tropical  parts  of  Central 
America  and  Mexico.  It  may  be  well  called  the  South 
American  Region. 

"VI.  The  Nearctic  Region,  which  consists  of  all  tem- 
perate and  arctic  North  America,  with  Greenland,  and  is 
thus  well  described  as  the  North  American  Region." 

As  it  has  just  been  defined,  it  will  be  seen  that  exten- 
sive areas  of  the  Palaearctic  Region  are  under  a  high 
state  of  cultivation  and  much  of  it  is  thickly  populated. 
In  consequence  ot  these  two  facts  extermination,  in  times 
past,  has  been  the  fate  of  many  of  its  mammalia,  and  this 
process  is  at  present  going  on  more  rapidly  than  ever.  It 
has  thinned  the  ranks  of  animal  life  within  the  bounda- 
ries of  the  region  to  such  an  extent  that,  notwithstanding 
its  extensiveness,  it  ranks  at  present  below  the  smaller 
old  and  new  world  regions  of  the  tropics  in  the  richness  of 
its  mammalian  fauna.  Some  of  its  forms,  however,  are 
quite  peculiar,  while  others  are  highly  characteristic. 
There  are  camels  and  a  half-dozen  different  genera  of 
deer.  A  genus  of  dogs  of  the  family  Canidce  occur,  and  a 
great  variety  of  the  rodentia  abound,  as  rats,  mice,  squir- 
rels, hares,  and  their  kind.  Seven  genera  of  rumi- 
nants fall  within  the  limits  of  this  region;  all  of  the  fam- 
ily Bomdce;  and  weasels  and  pandas  are  also  characteristic. 
Upon  its  northern  coasts  are  found  seals,  and  the  land 
carnivora  are  well  represented  in  the  wildcats,  the 
wolves,  foxes  and  bears.  In  other  parts  wild  horses  and 
asses  exist,  the  latter  being  abundant  in  Asia. 

Passing  to  the  Ethiopian  Region,  which  includes  in 
the  main  Africa  and  the  great  island  of  Madagascar,  we 
are  struck  at  once  with  the  marked  differences  in  its 
mammalian  fauna  as  compared  with  what  we  found  in 
the  Palaearctic  Region.  Madagascar  and  the  Mascarene 
Islands  are  especially  remarkable,  and  in  the  case  of  the 


ON  BIOLOGY.  33 

first  mentioned  we  find  many  characteristic  small  mam- 
mals not  found  on  the  African  Continent,  while  it  lacks 
all  the  large  carnivora,  the  apes,  giraffes,  elephants,  ante- 
lopes and  others  which  are  found  there.  Wallace  has  said: 

"The  African  Continent  is  preeminently  the  country  of 
large  mammalia.  It  possesses  an  abundance  of  elephants, 
rhinoceroses  of  several  species,  giraffes  (now  peculiar  to 
it),  gorillas  and  baboons — the  largest  of  the  ape  tribe — a 
host  of  large  and  remarkable  antelopes,  the  huge  hip- 
popotamus, several  species  of  zebras,  wild  buffaloes,  sev- 
eral remarkable  forms  of  swine,  and  an  abundance  of 
lions,  leopards,  and  hyenas— forming  together  an  assem- 
blage of  large  and  highly  organized  animals  such  as  occur 
nowhere  else  upon  the  globe.  There  are  also  many 
smaller,  but  very  remarkable  forms." 

And  so  it  goes  with  the  four  remaining  regions  defined 
above,  the  Oriental,  the  Australian,  the  Neotropical,  and 
the  Nearctic.  Each  possesses  its  peculiar  and  character- 
istic forms  of  mammals,  and  each  region  its  varying 
physical  aspect.  What  has  been  said  of  the  first  two 
holds  true  in  principle  in  all  the  others. 

Australia  of  the  Australian  Region  is  especially  charac- 
terized, inasmuch  as  all  the  more  ordinary  forms  of  mam- 
mals are  not  found  there,  their  room  being  taken  by  the 
varied  group  of  the  marsupials,  of  which  there  are  5 
distinct  families  and  many  genera.  Echidna  and  Orni- 
thorhynchus,  two  other  distinct  families  of  most  remark- 
able mammals,  are  also  found  on  the  Australian  Conti- 
nent. 

Thus  we  see  how  it  is  that  animal  and  plant  life  is  dis- 
tributed over  the  face  of  the  globe  according  to  certain 
natural  laws,  and  that  those  distributions  have  varied 
during  the  past  history  of  the  earth,  owing  to  the  varied 
application  of  the  same  laws  and  to  other  circumstances. 
In  short  there  is  in  the  individual  case  of  any  existing 
animal  or  plant  on  the  earth  a  reason  for  its  being  found 
over  one  area  and  not  over  another.  There  is  a  very  good 
reason  why  giraffes  are  found  in  Africa  and  not  in  Mex- 
ico, as  there  is  why  we  find  yucca  in  the  heart  of  Mexico, 
and  not  in  Africa. 

Science  has  made  very  considerable  progress  toward 
the  elucidation  and  demonstration  of  many  of  the  laws  to 
which  I  refer;  there  still  remains,  however,  in  the  grasp 
of  the  great  unknown  a  vast  store  of  tacts  not  yet  brought 
to  light,  though  the  incessant  investigation  of  the  scien- 
tific researcher  tends  to  almost  daily  pass  them  over  to 
the  realm  of  the  known. 


34  LECTURES 

With  this  brief  but,  I  believe,  sufficient  account  of  ani- 
mal distribution  for  our  present  purpose,  we  are  now  in 
position  to  pass  a  step  still  nearer  the  main  subject  of  our 
lecture.  For,  without  some  strong  hint  as  to  the  laws 
governing  the  distribution  of  existing  life,  we  could 
hardly  have  been  expected  to  draw  a  clear  picture  of 
what  geology  has  to  show  us  for  the  ages  that  are  past. 

As  commonly  defined  in  books,  geology  is  the  science 
which  treats  of  the  physical  history  of  the  earth's  crust, 
and  of  the  operation  of  those  laws  which  are  responsible 
for  the  changes  which  have  occurred  in  it  throughout 
time.  But  there  is  a  great  deal  more  in  the  science  than 
this  definition  would  at  first  appear  to  indicate,  and  in 
the  writer's  estimation  no  one  among  us  has  more  beauti- 
fully dwelt  upon  its  real  teachings  than  our  distinguished 
countryman,  Professor  Joseph  Le  Conte. 

Le  Conte  has  pointed  out  that  the  study  of  the  science 
of  geology  falls  naturally  under  three  great  divisional 
heads  or  departments.  Under  structural  geology  we  may 
regard  the  earth  much  in  the  same  light  as  the  anatomist 
regards  the  body,  and  study  it  from  the  standpoint  of  its 
external  form  and  internal  structure.  Or,  again,  under 
dynamical  geology  we  may  have  to  do  with  what  may  be 
considered  the  physiology  of  the  earth,  or  the  action  upon 
its  structure  by  the  elements,  as  the  air,  water  and  cer- 
tain chemical  and  physical  forces.  Lastly,  we  have 
historical  geology,  comparable  with  the  science  of 
embryology  for  it  takes  into  consideration  the  history  of 
the  development  of  the  earth  and  the  laws  which  have 
governed  that  development. 

Our  authority,  then,  proceeds  to  show  "that  there  are 
certain  laws  underlying  all  development — certain  general 
principles  common  to  all  history,  whether  of  the  in- 
dividual, the  race,  or  the  earth."  The  geologist  finds 
that  these  general  principles  are  quite  as  applicable  to  his 
science,  or  to  the  earth's  history,  as  they  are,  for 
example,  to  the  civic  history  of  man,  or  the  history  of 
civilization. 

"All  history  is  divided  into  eras,  ages,  periods,  epochs, 
separated  from  each'  other  more  or  less  trenchantly  by 
great  events  producing  great  changes.  In  written  history 
these  are  treated  according  to  their  importance,  in 
separate  volumes,  or  separate  chapters,  sections,  etc.  So 
earth  history  is  similarly  divided  into  geological  eras, 
ages,  periods,  etc.;  and  these  have  been  recorded  by 
Nature  in  separate  rock-systems,  rock-series,  rock- 
formations,  and  rock-strata." 


ON  BIOLOGY.  35 

When  such  comparisons  receive  our  further  reflections 
it  becomes  apparent  that  eras,  ages,  periods,  etc.,  in  all 
history  insensibly  graduate  into  each  other,  "though 
sometimes  the  change  is  more  rapid  and  revolutionary." 
We  may  even  make  it  comparable  with  individual 
history,  where  those  ages  we  call  infancy,  childhood, 
youth,  and  manhood  imperceptibly  merge  into  each 
other.  And  here,  not  infrequently,  some  deeply  felt  ex- 
perience may  hasten  on  the  characteristics  of  the  suc- 
ceeding stages.  Certain  vicissitudes  make  some  in- 
dividuals men  of  affairs  before  they  are  twenty,  yet  they 
may  retain  some  of  those  characters  which  pertain  to 
youth. 

"In  social  and  political  life,  too,  successive  phases  of 
civilization,  embodying  successive  dominant  principles, 
usually  graduate  into  each  other;  yet  great  events  have 
sometimes  determined  exceptionally  rapid  changes  in  the 
direction  or  the  rate  of  movement.  So  also  is  it  in  geo- 
logical history.  The  eras,  periods,  etc.,  usually  shade 
more  or  less  insensibly  into  each  other;  yet  there  have 
been  times  of  comparatively  rapid  or  revolutionary 
change.  In  all  history  there  are  periods  of  comparative 
quiet,  during  which  forces  of  change  are  gathering 
streneth,  separated  by  periods  of  more  rapid  change, 
during  which  the  accumulated  forces  produce  conspicu- 
ous effects." 

Geologic  history  teaches  us  that  early  in  the  earth's 
growth  there  was  a  time  when  those  organisms  we  call 
mollusks  weie  the  dominant  types  throughout  nature.  It 
was  an  age  of  mollusks.  They  appeared  gradually  and 
gradually  culminated,  then  declined,  then  imperceptibly 
became  less  and  less  numerous,  to  exist  in  diminishing 
numbers  up  to  the  present  time.  As  they  began  to  de- 
cline a  higher  group,  or  the  fishes  appeared,  which  passed 
through  a  similar  rise,  culmination  and  declination,  and 
again  carried  up  in  a  similar  manner  to  the  present  age. 
Corresponding  ages  of  reptiles  and  mammals,  successively 
follow  overlapping  and  merging  with  each  other  in  pre- 
cisely the  same  manner  and  each  in  turn  successively 
dominating,  ihus  giving  us  an  age  of  mollusks,  an  age  of 
fishes,  and  age  of  reptiles  and  so  on.  Here,  as  in  individ- 
ual, or  in  social  history,  or  the  history  of  civilization,  we 
find  each  overlapping  age  foreshadowing  the  previous 
one  and  the  dominating  characteristics  of  each  arising 
in  the  successive  ages  of  their  predecessors.  When 
these  phases  are  made  comparable  with  individual  his- 
tory, Le  Conte  reminds  us;  "In  youth,  the  characteristic 


36  LECTURES 

faculties  of  childhood,  viz.,  perception  and  memory, 
decline  and  become  subordinate  to  the  higher  faculty 
of  imagination,  and  this,  in  turn,  becomes  subordinate 
to  the  still  higher  faculty  of  productive  thought;  and 
thus  the  whole  organism  becomes  higher  and  more  com- 
plex. Each  stage  of  development  including  not  only  its 
own  characteristic,  but  also,  in  a  subordinate  degree, 
those  of  all  preceding  stages." 

D  Precisely  the  same  principles  apply  to  social  develop- 
ment, where  the  forces  characteristic  of  the  previous 
stages  of  its  history  are  successively  absorbed  and  included 
by  each  succeeding  stage.  And,  as  development  proceeds, 
the  entire  social  structure  ever  becomes  more  complex, 
richer  in  detail,  and  occupies  higher  and  higher  planes. 
All  this  is  repeated  in  geologic  history. 

Now  in  geology  there  are  two  methods  employed  for 
determining  the  extent  of  its  eras,  ages,  periods  and  other 
divisions.  We  may,  in  the  first  instance,  rely  upon  the 
unconformitv  of  the  rock-system,  and  in  the  second  in 
the  change  of  the  life-system.  Almost  without  exception 
the  life-system  is  found  to  correspond  with  the  uncon- 
formity of  the  rock-system,  and  in  the  few  cases  where  it 
does  not  it  should  be  followed  as  the  safer  guide. 

All  over  the  world  the  great  geologic  eras,  ages  and 
periods  are  the  same,  though  the  minor  divisions  of  the 
latter  are  non-cotemporaneous  they  are,  nevertheless, 
likewise  similar. 

First,  then,  we  have  the  grand  divisions  of  the  earth's 
geologic  history  as  a  whole.  These  are  designated  as  the 
eras  and  there  are  five  of  them.  The  oldest  of  all  is  the 
Arcnaean  or  Eozoic,  which  includes  the  Laurentian  sys- 
tem; above  this  occurs  the  Palaeozoic  era,  embodying  the 
Palaeozoic  or  Primary  system;  superimposed  upon  tnis  is 
the  Mesozoic  era,  the  record  of  which  is  embodied  in  the 
Secondary  system  this  is  followed  by  the  Cenozoic  era, 
whose  history  has  been  written  in  the  Tertiary  and  Quar- 
ternary  systems;  fifthly  and  lastly  occurs  the  Psychozoic 
era,  which  may  well  be  designated  as  the  era  of  mind, 
it  being  the  recent  system  or  the  system  of  the  present 
time. 

So  again,  as  has  already  been  intimated,  the  history  of 
the  earth  as  a  whole  is  susceptible  of  being  divided  into 
seven  ages,  based  upon  the  culminations  during  geologic 
time  of  certain  great  groups  of  animals.  These  are,  first, 
the  Archaean  age  which  is  measured  by  the  rocks  of  the 
Laurentian  system;  second,  the  age  of  mollusks,  or  the 
age  of  invertebrates,  including  the  Silurian  formation  of 


ON  BIOLOGY.  37 

rocks;  the  Devonian  age,  represented  by  the  series  of 
rocks  in  which  the  ichthyian  or  fish  forms  culminated; 
the  age  of  Amphibians,  represented  by  the  rocks  of  the 
carboniferous  strata;  the  age  of  Reptiles,  represented  by 
the  rocks  of  the  Secondary  system;  the  Mammalian  age, 
represented  by  the  Tertiary  and  Quarternary;  and  lastly, 
the  age  of  Man,  represented  by  the  recent  rocks. 

Unconformity  in  the  rock  system,  though  of  a  less 
general  nature,  also  furnishes  the  necessary  basis  for  the 
subdivisions  of  eras  and  ages  into  the  minor  subdivisions 
of  periods  and  epochs.  So  much,  then,  for  the  methods 
adopted  by  geologists  for  demonstrating  the  natural 
divisions  of  the  earth's  crust  and  the  names  they  have 
applied  to  those  divisions.  The  subject  includes  a  very 
small  part  of  the  science  of  geology — one  chapter  out  of 
a  great  many,  many  others— but  it  will  suffice  our  pur- 
pose here.  It  will  hardly  be  necessary  to  add  that  the 
Laurentian  rock  system  of  the  Archaean  era  is  the  oldest 
known  to  geologists,  the  others  in  the  order  we  have  pre- 
sented them  being  successively  more  and  more  recent 
until  we  arrive  at  the  Psychozoic  or  the  present  horizon. 
'  It  is  not  to  be  believed,  however,  that  the  very  lowest 
stratum  of  the  Laurentian  rocks  represents  the  original 
or  primitive  crust  of  the  earth,  for  there  is  evidence  in 
them  of  stratification  which  abundantly  indicates  that 
they  have  been  formed  from  other  rooks  which  underlie 
them,  and  these  likely  from  still  others  and  vastly  older 
ones  of  which  we  as  yet  have  no  definite  knowledge. 
When  one  appreciates  the  manner  in  which  these  rocks 
were  built  up,  and  realizes  the  fact  that  in  some  parts  of 
the  world  they  exhibit  a  thickness  of  40,000  feet,  it  is  not 
difficult  to  conceive  of  the  enormous  lapse  of  time  they 
represent.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  Archaean  era  extends 
over  a  greater  length  of  time  than  all  of  the  remaining 
history  of  the  earth  put  together.  We  have  all  heard,  at 
differ  nt  times,  of  the  enormous  periods  of  time  that 
geologists  insist  upon  when  speaking  of  the  processes 
that  have  led  to  the  formation  of  the  crust  of  the  earth 
as  it  is  now  presented  to  us.  It  will  be  quite  in  point  in 
this  place  to  dwell  for  a  moment  upon  this  matter,  as  it 
is  of  importance  in  connection  with  what  I  have  to  say 
further  along.  There  are  those  who  believe,  though  it  is 
a  satisfaction  to  know  that  their  number  is  steadily  de- 
creasing, that  geologists  are  prone  to  indulge  in  a  species 
of  guessing  when  they  come  to  estimate  the  lapses  of 
time  that  have  taken  place  during  the  various  eras,  ages, 
periods,  etc.,  of  the  world's  history,  as  recorded  in  the 


38  LECTURES 

several  geological  horizons.  Some  have  gone  so  far  as  to 
say  that  they  have  been  guided  simply  by  the  great 
apparent  age  of  the  fossil  remains  of  animals  that  for- 
merly Inhabited  the  earth;  that  the  mere  fact  of 
such  remains  being  converted  into  petrifactions  must  of 
necessity  have  taken  millions  of  years;  that  those  esti- 
mates are,  in  their  estimation,  still  further  supported  by 
the  discovery  in  different  parts  of  the  world  of  entire 
forests  of  enormous  trees  which  at  some  other  very  re- 
mote age  were  similarly  fossilized.  But  those  people  to 
whom  I  refer  are  quite  wrong  in  the  premises,  and  the 
conception  of  the  lapses  of  time  in  the  world's  history,  as 
arrived  at  by  the  geologist,  is  by  no  means  based  upon 
any  such  data.  Nor  do  we  claim  upon  the  other  hand 
that  the  time  calculations  as  arrived  at  by  the  geologist 
are  to  be  considered  correct  beyond  all  peradventure  of  a 
doubt;  they  may  be  hundreds  of  years  or  even  thousands 
of  years  wide  of  the  truth;  but,  notwithstanding  all  that, 
they  never  vitiate  his  right  to  state  within  certain  bounds 
the  immense  lapses  of  time  that  it  has  taken  Nature  to 
bring  about  some  of  her  results  as  they  are  revealed  to  us 
in  our  study  of  the  physical  history  of  the  world  and 
recorded  in  her  geology. 

In  order  to  illustrate  my  meaning  permit  me  to  present 
you  with  one  or  two  examples.  A  very  simple  one  is  the 
calculation  of  the  time  it  has  probably  taken  for  the 
Niagara  River  to  excavate  its  gorge.  That  feat  is  but  one 
of  many  thousands  of  Nature's  chiselings,  which  has 
been  accomplished  entirely  within  the  scope  of  the  pres- 
ent epoch,  and  the  computation  of  tbe  time  it  has  taken  to 
perform  it  is  a  matter  of  no  great  difficulty,  as  the  physi- 
cal factors  of  the  problem  are  at  our  hand.  The  geolo- 
gist tells  us  that  he  believes  it  to  have  been  about  36,000 
years.  Now  there  is  no  difficulty  in  ascertaining  the  fact 
that  Lake  Erie  has  an  elevation  of  about  300  feet  above 
Lake  Ontario,  the  former  being  terminated  by  an  abrupt 
escarpment  of  about  300  feet  in  height;  and,  from  this 
point,  according  to  an  eminent  authority,  "a  narrow 
gorge,  with  nearly  perpendicular  sides  and  200  to  300  feet 
deep,  runs  backward  through  the  higher  or  Erie  plateau 
as  far  as  the  falls.  The  Niagara  River  runs  out  of  Lake 
Erie  and  upon  the  Erie  plateau  as  far  as  the  falls,  then 
pitches  167  feet  perpendicularly,  and  then  runs  in  the 
gorge  for  seven  miles  to  Q.ueenstown  where  it  emerges  on 
the  Ontario  plateau.  Long  observation  has  proved  that 
the  position  of  the  fall  is  not  stationary,  but  slowly 
recedes  at  a  rate  which  has  been  variously  estimated 


OF  THF 


X 

SITY   1 


UNIVERSITY 

i  ir 


ON  BIOLOGY.  39 

from  one  to  three  feet  per  annum.  The  process  of  reces- 
sion has  been  carefully  observed,  and  the  reason  why  it 
maintains  its  perpendicularity  is  very  clear.  The  sur- 
face rock  of  Erie  plateau  is  a  firm  limestone.  Beneath 
this  is  a  softer  shale.  This  softer  rock  is  rapidly  eroded 
by  the  force  of  the  falling  water,  and  leaves  the  harder 
limestone,  projecting  as  tablerocks.  From  time  to  time 
these  projecting  tables  are  loosened  and  fall  into  the 
chasm  below."  Taking  into  consideration  the  configura- 
tion of  the  country;  the  nature  of  the  strata  and  their 
contents  of  the  walls  of  the  gorge;  the  carefully  observed 
progress  of  erosion,  which  has  been  noted  for  many 
years  by  competent  persons;  it  soon  becomes  evident  to 
any  intelligent  observer  that,  in  the  first  place,  the  falls 
of  Niagara  were  originally  situated  at  Queenstown,  and 
that  during  the  present  geologic  epoch  they  have  cut 
their  way  back  seven  miles  to  their  present  position,  and 
that  this  erosion  is  advancing  at  a  rate  of  about  one  foot 
per  annum. 

With  the  length  and  height  of  the  gorge,  and  with  the 
rate  of  the  recession  of  the  falls  each  year,  by  the  sim- 
plest arithmetic  we  can  easily  get  at  the  result  we  have 
already  mentioned.  In  the  history  of  the  formation  of 
the  world,  however,  36,000  years  is  an  exceedingly  small 
matter,  really  but  a  moment  as  compared  with  a  cen- 
tury when  we  consider  it  in  connection  with  the  ab- 
solutely inconceivable  lapses  of  time  recorded 
in  the  older  geologic  eras.  How  insignificant,  for 
instance,  as  compared  with  those  typical  and  vast 
erosions  as  seen  in  the  Grand  Canon  of 
the  Colorado  and  other  canons  of  the  same 
enormous  system.  The  plateau  in  which'  that  great 
erosion  occurs  is  elevated  some  seven  or  eight  thousand 
feet  above  the  sea;  and,  in  case  of  the  Grand  Canon  of  the 
Colorado,  the  eroding  stream  it  contains  has  cut  its  way 
down  through  the  earth  for  a  distance  of  from  three  to 
nearly  seven  thousand  feet  in  some  places.  It  has  a 
length  of  300  miles.  Its  lateral  walls  clearly  exhibit 
nearly  the  entire  geological  series  from  the  tertiary  age 
downward,  and  it  shows  the  strata  of  the  eroded  plateau 
to  be  very  nearly  horizontally  deposed.  There  is  not  a 
shadow  of  a  doubt  as  to  how  that  great  abyss  was  sculpt, 
for  the  same  agencies  are  still  in  operation  at  the  present 
moment  and  the  enormous  eroding  power  can  be  seen  as 
the  work  goes  on.  If  the  comparatively  short  and  shal- 
low gorge  of  the  Niagara  River  took  36,000  years  to  be 
carved  back  to  its  present  site,  I  beg  to  leave  it  to  your 


40  LECTURES 

imagination  how  long  it  took  the  Colorado  River  to  find 
its  present  bed,  a  mile  below  the  surface  of  the  earth,  and 
for  a  distance  of  300  miles  in  length. 

Deltas  of  rivers  and  their  formations  furnish  us  with 
more  of  Nature's  operations  from  which  we  may  make 
toleratly  correct  estimates  of  the  time  it  takes  for  such 
feats  to  be  performed.  The  delta  of  the  Mississippi 
could  not  have  taken  less  than  50,000  years  and  probably 
took  a  very  much  greater  time  to  form.  Here  we  have 
for  data  the  cubical  contents  of  the  delta;  the  annual 
mud-discharge  of  the  river;  and  the  computation  of  the 
extent  of  the  submarine  portion  of  the  delta,  and  some 
few  minor  factors. 

Again,  the  history  of  the  coal  beds  and  the  accumula- 
tion of  coal  oifer  us  with  another  series  of  facts  from 
which  it  is  possible  to  gain  some  idea  from  another  point 
of  view  of  the  enormous  lapse  of  time  it  has  taken  Nature 
to  achieve  some  of  her  works. 

It  is  now  perfectly  demonstrable  that  coal  was  accumu- 
lated during  the  Carboniferous  period,  and  the  accumula- 
tion and  formation  of  it  took  place  at  the  mouths  of 
certain  great  rivers,  which  at  that  time  discharged 
themselves  into  the  ocean.  There,  in  such  places,  existed 
vast  peat  swamps,  overgrown  by  the  peculiar  vegetation 
of  that  period,  which  at  all  times  were  subject  to  floods 
from  the  river  on  the  one  hand,  and  inundations  from 
high  oceanic  tides  on  the  other.  A  recent  coal  bed,  of 
identically  the  same  nature,  is  now  in  the  process  of 
formation  under  our  very  eyes  in  the  Mississippi  delta, 
and  careful  study  is  alone  required  to  decide  the  rate  at 
which  coal  is  deposited  therein.  Oiher  forces  are  and 
were  also  at  work  both  during  recent  time  and  during  the 
geologic  period  or  subperiodsof  the  Carboniferous  system. 
These  have  been  scientifically  considered  by  many  com- 
petent geologists,  and  their  operations  taken  duly  into 
consideration,  but  it  is  not  necessary  for  us  to  dwell  upon 
them  here,  and  to  many  of  you  they  are  no  doubt  already 
familiar.  It  has  been  ascertained,  for  example,  that  a 
vigorous  vegetation  yields  by  death  and  decay  and 
growth  about  100  tons  of  dried  organic  matter  per  cen- 
tury to  the  acre.  But  such  an  amount  of  vegetable  mat- 
tjr  pressed  to  the  specific  gravity  of  coal  would  make  a 
layer  only  a  little  over  half  an  inch  in  thickness,  when 
spread  over  the  area  just  mentioned.  It  must  not  be  for- 
gotten, however,  that  certain  chemical  losses  are  experi- 
enced during  such  a  process,  and  upon  giving  these  due 
weight  the  result  has  been  arrived  at  that,  instead  of  de- 


ON  BIOLOGY.  41 

positing  over  half  an  inch,  our  estimate  should  read  only 
about  one-eighth  of  an  inch,  at  which  rate  it  would  require 
about  ten  thousand  years  to  make  a  layer  one  foot  thick. 
In  any  coal  basin  with  an  aggregate  thickness  of  100  feet 
its  formation  must  have  required  one  million 
years  to  accomplish.  But  it  is  not  uncommon 
to  find  150  feet  to  be  the  average  thickness  in 
some  coal  measures,  and  a  proportionately 
longer  time  must  have  been  required.  This  method  of 
computation  takes  into  consideration  the  rate  at  which  a 
vigorous  vegetation  produces  organic  matter,  but  we  may 
also  arrive  at  a  solution  by  estimating  the  rate  at  which 
the  river  deposits  its  sediments  over  the  area  in  which 
the  coal  is  forming. 

I  will  conclude  this  part  of  my  subject  with  an  ex- 
ample of  this  nature,  presented  us  by  the  authority 
quoted  in  several  instances  above,  and  we  are  told  that 
our  indebtedness  is  to  Sir  Charles  Lyell  for  the  "estimate 
of  the  time  necessary  to  accumulate  the  Nova  Scotia  coal 
measures.  This  coal-field  is  selected  because  the  evi- 
dences of  river  sediments  are  very  clear  throughout. 
The  area  of  this  coal-basin  is  18,000  square  miles;  but  the 
identity  in  character  of  portions  now  widely  separated 
by  seas — e.  g.,  on  Prince  Edward's  Island,  Cape  Breton, 
Magdalen  Island,  etc. — plainly  shows  that  ail  these  are 
parts  of  one  original  field,  which  could  not  have  been  less 
than  30,000  square  miles. 

"At  Pictou,  the  thickness  is  nearly  13,000  feet,  and  we 
certainly  shall  not  err  on  the  side  of  excess,  therefore,  if 
we  take  the  average  thickness  over  the  whole  area  of 
7,500  feet.  This  would  give  the  cubic  contents  of  the 
original  delta  deposit  as  about  51,000  cubic  miles.  Now, 
the  Mississippi  River,  according  to  Humphrey  and  Ab- 
bott, carries  to  iis  delta  annually  sediment  enough  ta 
cover  a  square  mile  268  feet  deep,  or  nearly  exactly  one- 
twentieth  of  a  cubic  mile.  Therefore,  to  accumulate  the 
mass  of  sediment  mentioned  above  would  take  the  Mis- 
sissippi about  1,000,000  years." 

And,  mark  you,  in  the  geological  series  of  the  earth's 
crust  the  Carboniferous  period  is  not  more  than  one- 
thirtieth  of  her  recorded  history.  Then  we  must  believe 
that  that  history  covers  a  period  of  30,000,000  of  years. 
But  Mr.  Wallace,  by  a  most  careful  estimate  made  from 
the  premises  of  the  general  erosion  of  the  land  area  of 
the  earth,  makes  its  recorded  history  but  28,000,000  of 
years.  Here  is  a  difference  of  2,000,000  of  years,  as  well 
as  a  difference  of  opinion,  but  it  can,  nevertheless,  hardly 


42  LECTURES 

be  considered  worthy  of  dispute.  To  me,  the  most  re- 
markable part  of  the  whole  question  is  that  so  many  fair 
and  candid  men,  using  such  a  variety  of  physical  data, 
should,  in  reality,  arrive  at  such  a  comparatively  uni- 
form result  after  all. 

Yet  30,000,000  of  years  "gives  us  no  adequate  con- 
ception of  the  time  involved  in  the  geological  history  of 
the  earth.  For  rocks  disintegrated  into  soils  and  de- 
posited as  sediments  are  again  reconsolidated  into  rocks, 
lifted  into  land-surfaces  to  be  again  disintegrated  into 
soils,  transported  and  deposited  as  sediments.  And  thus 
the  same  materials  have  been  worked  over  and  over 
again,  perhaps  many  times.  Thus  the  history  of  the 
earth,  recorded  in  stratified  rocks,  stretches  out  in  ap- 
parently endless  vista.  And  still  beyond  this,  beyond  the 
recorded  history,  is  the  infinite  unknown  abyss  of  the  un- 
recorded. The  domain  of  geology  is  nothing  less  than  (to 
us)  inconceivable  or  infinite  time."  (Le  Conte.) 

With  the  brief  sketch  I  have  given  of  the  distribution 
of  existing  animals,  and  the  still  briefer  account  of  the 
divisions  of  geologic  history  and  the  enormous  lapses  of 
time  that  measure  those  immense  ages,  we  may  now  pro- 
ceed to  show  that  it  is  through  the  science  of  palaeon- 
tology that  biology  is  linked  to  the  very  important  science 
of  geology. 

Broadly  speaking,  palaeontology  treats  of  the  fossil  re- 
mains of  animals  and  plants  as  they  occur  in  the  earth's 
crust.  It  takes  into  consideration  their  structure,  their 
taxonomy,  their  affinities  both  with  extinct  types  and 
forms  yet  existing.  Moreover  palaeontology  is  the  hand- 
maiden of  geology,  inasmuch  as  it  is  through  its  aid,  or 
the  employment  of  the  life-system,  we  are  enabled  to  de- 
termine and  limit  the  several  eras,  ages,  periods,  etc.,  in 
geology.  In  this  sense  it  acts  as  a  check  upon  the  alter- 
native method  of  establishing  the  divisions  in  geology,  of 
which  we  speak,  or  of  the  employment  of  the  rock-system 
to  which  reference  has  already  been  made. 

As  I  have  said  in  a  previous  lecture  one  of  the  great 
departments  of  palaeontology  is  palaaobotany,  the  science 
that  deals  with  the  fossil  florae  of  the  world;  and  in  an- 
other, though  less  strict  sense,  the  science  of  archaeology 
in  reality  falls  within  the  domain  of  palaeontology,  as  in 
the  main  it  treats  of  the  works  of  extinct  races  of  men. 
My  reasons  have  already  been  advanced  for  including 
palaeontology,  palaeobotany.  and  archaeology, all  within  the 
limits  of  the  science  of  biology  where  in  reality  they  each 
and  all  belong. 


ON  BIOLOGY.  43 

It  is  most  natural  that  that  department  of  palaeontology 
which  takes  Into  consideration  the  geological  history  of 
man  is  the  one  that  has  always  been  of  the  greatest 
interest  to  the  world  at  large.  For  some  time  past  our 
knowledge  of  the  history  of  man  in  its  entirety  has  been 
sufficiently  extensive  so  as  to  admit  of  its  being  system- 
atically arranged  under  various  heads  and  divisions. 
Students  in  archaeology  see  three  main  divisions  or  ages, 
as  they  are  called,  in  the  history  of  human  progress  and 
civilization.  These  are  first  the  Stone  age  including  that 
lapse  of  time  when  men  employed  stone  principally  to 
form  their  tools  and  weapons.  Early  in  his  history  such 
material  was  simply  chipped  out  to  serve  his  purpose, 
and  that  time  is  referred  to  as  the  Palaeolithic  period; 
but  during  the  latter  part  of  the  stone  age  men  came  to 
polish  those  chipped  stone  implements,  and  that  time  has 
been  designated  as  the  Neolithic  period.  The  Paleolithic 
period  has  again  been  subdivided  into  a  Reindeer  age 
corresponding  with  the  second  Glacial  epoch,  and  a  Mam- 
moth age,  corresponding  with  the  Champlain  epoch. 
With  the  Neolithic  commences  the  present  Psychozoic 
era,  and  the  reign  of  man  is  completely  established 
These  ages,  however,  are  not  universally  represented,  nor 
do  they  everywhere,  by  any  means,  closely  correspond 
with  the  geological  horizons  I  have  mentioned.  This 
will  be  clear  when  we  come  to  tnink  that  it  is  only  three 
hundred  years  ago  that  our  Indians  were  in  the  Stone  age 
and  the  South  Sea  Islanders  have,  as  yet,  progressed  no 
farther  than  the  Neolithic  period  to-day.  It  is  in  Europe 
that  the  correspondences  are  the  closest,  for  it  is  due  to 
the  archaeologists  of  that  country  to  have  first  clearlv 
established  them. 

Our  two  remaining  ages  in  the  history  of  human  civili- 
zation are  the  age  of  Bronze  and  the  Iron  age,  but  their 
consideration  falls  completely  within  the  pale  of  modern 
history,  and  so  does  not  especially  concern  us  here 

Every  year  that  goes  by  rewards  the  researches  of  the 
archaeologist  in  various  parts  of  the  world  with  the  dis- 
covery of  relics  which  tend  to  throw  more  or  less  light 
upon  the  history  of  primeval  man  upon  earth  For  the 
most  part  these  consist  either  of  examples  of  his  ancient 
works  or  of  the  remains  of  man  himself.  And  we  mav 
add  here,  that  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  evidence 
on  the  side  of  the  question  of  man  having  arisen  in  time 
from  the  most  lowly  ancestors,  by  evolutional  develop- 
ment,  it  is,  nevertheless,  true  that  up  to  the  present  time 
all  the  remains  we  have  of  him  go  to  show  that  nothing 


44  LECTURES 

as  yet  has  been  discovered  but  what  shows  him  to  have 
been  most  distinctively  human.  Those  remains  of  the 
earliest  men  yet  met  with  attest  to  the  fact,  to  be  sure, 
that  he  stood  very  low  in  the  scale  of  civilization,  and  had 
by  no  means  attained  to  the  position  of  the  "lord  of  crea- 
tion." What  I  mean  to  say  is  that  we  have  not  as  yet 
met  with  the  skeletal  remains  of  fossil  or  sub-fossil  man, 
that  directly  link  him  with  his  anthropoid  affines.  Such 
material,  I  am  constrained  to  believe,  lies  locked  up  for 
the  archaeologist  of  the  future  in  the  Quarternary  of  Asia, 
where  most  probablv  urimittve  man  originallv  arose. 

There  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  man  existed  through- 
out the  entire  Quarternary  period.  In  this  country  his 
remains  have  been  found  upon  both  coasts;  his  first  ap- 
pearance was,  however,  probably  upon  the  Pacific  Coast 
and,  as  many  believe,  as  a  migrant  from  Asia.  His  bones 
and  rude  works  of  art  have  also  been  discovered  in 
Europe,  India  and  South  America.  Such  relics  often  oc- 
cur in  caves,  in  the  drift  and  elsewhere,  where  they  are 
mixed  up  with  the  bones  of  animals  long  since  extinct, 
as  mastodons,  cave-bears  and  the  like,  leaving  no  doubt 
whatever  as  to  the  cotemporaneity  of  the  two.  In 
Southern  France  occur  the  Perigord  Caves,  in  which 
have  been  discovered  some  of  the  most  interesting  speci- 
mens of  extinct  men;  pieces  of  reindeer  antler  have  been 
discovered,  upon  which,  plainly  etched,  we  find  figures  of 
the  mammoth  long,  long  since  exterminated  in  Europe. 
Several  skulls  of  early  or  middle  Quarternary  men  have 
been  found  in  different  parts  of  Europe,  and  that,  too,  in 
situations  precluding  all  doubt  as  to  their  age.  These 
skulls  present  every  evidence  that  they  belonged  to  a 
very,  very  low  species  of  man.  There  are  plenty  of  men 
living,  however,  and  they  are  to  be  found  among  the  sav- 
age races,  in  whose  skulls  we  see  characters  quite  as  low 
as  those  distinguishing  the  crania  of  the  men  of  the  early 
Quarternary  period.  Nevertheless,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  all  the  skulls  of  ancient  men  thus  far  discov- 
ered are  of  the  very  lowest  of  the  savage  type.  It  is  fair 
to  presume  that  they  in  their  way  indicate  what  kind  of 
men  existed  in  those  far  distant  times,  and  that  we  will 
never  meet  with  any  higher  types  coming  from  the  same 
geological  horizon.  If  we  do  ever  meet  with  any  at  all 
different,  everything  points  to  the  probability  that  they 
will  prove  to  be  of  a  very  much  lower  order,  most  likely 
anthropoid  in  their  general  contour.  So  much  for  the 
Quarternary,  now  what  do  we  find  as  we  pass  to  the  Ter- 
tiary age;  nothing  more  than  one  would  naturally 


ON  BIOLOGY.  45 

expect,  that  is,  a  greater  meagerness  of 
the  record.  No  remains  of  bones  of  an- 
cient men,  and  only  a  handful,  comparatively 
speaking,  of  somewhat  doubtful  specimens  of  his  works. 
These  are  principally  roughly  chipped  flints,  and  bones  of 
animals  showing  some  suspicious  scratches;  and,  in  truth, 
such  is  the  evidence  in  brief.  Writing  in  ISiS,  Le  Cbnte 
remarks:  "The  Miocene  man  is  not  acknowledged  by  a 
single  careful  geologist."  "Mr. 

Favre,  reviewing  the  whole  subject  up  to  1870,  and, 
again,  Evans,  President  of  the  Geological  Society  of  Lon- 
don, reviewing  the  subject  up  to  187-5,  and  Dawkins  in 
1879,  and  Lubbock  in  1881,  decide  that  the  existence  of 
Tertiary  man  is  yet  unproved." 

For  myself  I  can  only  say,  and  influenced  as  I  am  by 
the  study  of  a  large  collection  of  fossils  from  the  Pliocene 
of  Oregon,  only  recently  completed,  that  my  inclinations 
lead  me  to  believe  that  man  did  exist  during  the  latter 
part  of  the  Tertiary,  at  leas'"-,  and  was  probably  in  exist- 
ence as  a  very  low  type  of  the  genus  Homo  at  a  much 
earlier  date.  As  to  how  long  man  has  existed  upon  earth 
as  man,  geologists  are  at  variance  in  their  opinions,  the 
time  ranging  all  the  way  from  7,000  to  100,000  years. 
Evidence  is  not  lacking,  I  think,  to  show  .that  the  latter 
is  probably  more  nearly  true  than  the  former.  Res- arches 
in  this  most  engaging  field  of  all  others  open  to  man,  are 
being  continually  pushed  with  the  greatest  degree  of 
interest,  and  there  can  be  no  question  that  in  the  future 
many  important  discoveries  will  be  made,  tending  to 
throw 'additional  light  upon  the  subject. 

It  is  nought  to  be  surprised  at,  that  the  geological  his- 
tory of  man  is  so  thoroughly  imperfect,  and  were  it  not 
for  his  works  that  have  been  preserved  in  diiferent  parts 
of  the  earth,  how  vastly  more  imperfect  that  record 
would  be!  Remove  all  that  the  archaeologist  has  brought 
to  light;  bring  down  the  pala3ontological  history  of  man 
to  his  bones  alone,  and  *it  would  be  represented 
but  by  a  few  mutilated  pages  in  a  history  of 
many,  manv  volumes.  He  would  then  be  com- 
parable with  other  forms  of  vertebrates  of  the 
great  group  of  mammals  to  which  he  belongs, 
and  how  meager,  very  meager,  is  the  geological  record 
with  some  of  them.  Thousands  upon  thousands  of  mam- 
mals, with  histories  extending  through  enormous  lapses 
of  time,  have  existed,  developed  and  become  extinct  upon 
the  earth,  and  absolutely  left  no  palieontological  history 
at  all.  Many  of  those  animals  were  undoubtedly  of  mas- 


46  LECTURES 

todonic  proportions;  legions  of  them  were  of  moderate 
and  diminutive  sizes;  and  their  forms  must  have  been 
almost  of  endless  variety.  Think  for  a  moment,  as  an 
illustration  of  my  meaning,  of  the  innumerable  herds  of 
buffaloes  that  once  covered  our  Western  prairies;  and 
what,  do  you  suppose,  would  be  the  chance  of  discover- 
ing a  fossil  specimen  of  that  animal  a  few  thousand 
years  hence?  Barely  any  whatever.  Wallace  tells  us: 

"Fossil  remains  of  land  animals  are,  of  course,  rarely 
found  except  in  lacustrine  or  estuarine  deposits;  and 
these  are  often  entirely  wanting  throughout  extensive 
geological  formations.  But  even  where  such  fossiliferous 
beds  occur,  the  conditions  favorable  to  the  preservation 
of  small  mammalia  are  exceedingly  rare,  the  entire  series 
of  freshwater  Wealden  beds  having  yielded  no  trace  of 
them,  although  we  are  quite  certain  that  they  were  then 
both  varied  and  abundant.  Even  more  remarkable  is 
the  fact  that  the  whole  twenty-five  species  of  Purbeck 
mammals,  belonging  to  ten  genera,  were  obtained  from  a 
single  stratum  only  a  few  inches  thick,  and  from  an  area 
of  less  than  500  square  yards.  Yet  these  small  animals 
must  have  abounded  at  this  period;  and  it  is  impossible 
to  believe  that  anything  but  a  most  imperfect  and  frac- 
tional representation  of  the  mammalian  fauna  of  the 
country  could  have  been  gathered  into  this  narrow  grave- 
yard. But  this  thin  stratum  occurs  amid  a  mass  of 
freshwater  deposits  160  feet  thick,  the  whole  of  which 
have  been  thoroughly  and  systematically  examined  by 
the  officers  of  the  Geological  Survey  of  Great  Britain; 
and  though  many  of  the  layers  contain  remains  of  land 
organisms — plants,  insects,  and  land-shells — no  other  part 
of  the  whole  series  has  yielded  a  single  fragment  of 
mammalian  remains!  Having  the  striking  example  of 
the  worthlessness  of  negative  evidence,  it  behooves  us  to 
be  cautious  of  rejecting  any  legitimate  conclusions  from 
the  facts  in  our  possession,  on  account  of  the  absence  of 
the  direct  evidence  of  fossil  remains." 

From  this  let  us  turn  to  the  other  aspect  of  the  ques- 
tion and  examine  what  in  reality  palaeontologists  have 
discovered  and  the  bearings  of  that  material  upon  biol- 
ogy. Confessedly  as  meager  as  the  number  of  fossils  of 
animals  is  that  have  come  to  light,  it  is  so  only  when 
taken  in  comparison  with  the  vast  host  of  extinct  forms 
which  have  as  yet  not  rewarded  the  researches  of  science, 
and  still  are  hidden  in  the  crust  of  the  earth,  or  have 
perished  utterly.  For,  take  mammals  as  an  example,  the 
list  of  fossil  forms  now  known  is  by  no  means  to  be  de- 


ON  BIOLOGY.  47 

spised,  and  the  light  their  careful  study  has  thrown  upon 
many  problems  touching  the  origin  of  their  kind 
is  simply  incalculable.  Many  hundreds  of  them 
are  in  our  possession,  and  the  number  is  con- 
stantly being  added  to  each  year.  Bearing  in 
mind  what  has  already  been  said  relative  to 
the  geographical  distribution  of  existing  mammals,  what 
would  we  naturally  look  for  among  the  fossil  forms  of  the 
present  geological  era  in  any  given  locality?  Naturally, 
the  fossil  and  sub-fossil  specimens  of  the  existing  mam- 
mals of  that  locality;  and  do  we  find  them?  It  is  exactly 
what  we  do  find,  and  the  fossilized  bones  as  they  are  dis- 
covered are  ascertained  to  have  belonged  to  individuals 
of  identically  the  same  species  of  those  now  living,  or  in 
the  case  of  the  extinct  types  to  very  closely  related 
species,  genera,  families  and  so  on.  In  other  words,  all 
over  the  world  the  fossil  florae  and  faunae  of  the  Recent 
epoch  of  the  Psychozoic  era  are  of  species  still  living  over 
the  regions  where  such  material  is  discovered. 

To  some  extent  this  is  also  characteristic  of 
the  next  preceding  geologic  system  or  of  the 
Quarternary;  but,  and  still  adhering  to  the  mammalia 
as  our  example,  we  meet  with  some  very  remarkable 
differences.  Now  it  is  a  well-known  fact  that  during 
the  Quarternary  period,  in  all  the  high- latitude  regions, 
the  earth's  crust  experienced  many  profound  oscillations 
which  were  accompanied  by  great  climatic  changes. 
Mammals,  as  a  class,  culminated  during  those  times,  and 
the  pristine  types  of  men  appeared  early  on  the  scene. 
The  geologic  history  of  the  world  passed  through  the 
Glacial,  Champlain  and  Terrace  epochs  During  the  first 
the  earth's  crust,  everywhere  in  high  latitudes,  was 
elevated  to  a  height  of  2,000  feet  or  more  above  its  present 
level.  This  area  was  sheeted  over  with  a  great  mantle  of 
ice,  which  sloped  away  far  down  into  the  temperate 
zone.  An  arctic  climate  prevailed.  The  reverse  move- 
ment took  place  during  the  Champlain  epoch  and  the 
entire  region  was  again  depressed,  and  that  to  such  an 
extent  that  the  seas  stood  upward  of  a  1,000  feet  above 
their  present  levels.  Lastly,  the  Terrace  epoch  was 
characterized  by  the  whole  region  to  which  we  refer 
gradually  coming  to  assume  its  present  physical  aspects. 
So  there  was,  during  this  time,  a  gradual  rising  of  the 
land  of  the  high  latitudes,  accompanied  by  a  gradual  ap- 
proach to  our  present  climate.  Many  of  the  events  and 
profound  physical  changes  enacted  during  those  three 
epochs  have  been  carefully  worked  out,  and  in  detail, 


48  LECTURES 

but  the  great  length  of  their  account  renders  it  impossi- 
ble for  me  to  enter  upon  such  an  extensive  subject  here. 

In  this  country  we  find  the  fossil  or  preserved  remains 
of  mammals  that  flourished  during  the  Quarternary 
period  in,  first,  marshes  and  bogs,  where  the  heavier  herbi- 
vores were  frequently  mired;  secondly,  in  the  bone  caves 
where  the  carnivorous  types  most  often  occur,  together 
with  the  other  large  species  as  ungulates,  rodents  and 
edentates.  Lastly,  many  various  species  have  been  discov- 
ered in  the  river  gravels,  especially  in  those  of  California. 
Most  of  the  Quarternary  mammals  are  now  extinct;  they 
were  notably  peculiar  and  often  of  great  size.  Some  were 
the  direct  ancestors  of  the  mammalian  types  that  now 
exist;  others  had  run  their  race  and  passed  away  without 
leaving  any  descendants.  Great  mastodons  and  elephants 
roamed  over  various  parts  of  what  is  now  the  United 
States.  Superb  specimens  of  these  most  perfectly  pre- 
served in  their  skeletal  structure,  have  been  taken  in 
New  Jersey,  New  York  and  elsewhere.  In  one  locality  in 
Kentucky  over  one  hundred  skeletons  of  mastodons  were 
obtained.  Enormous  bisons  or  buffaloes  also  existed  over 
the  same  areas,  together  with  ponderous  beavers  and 
gigantic  horses.  A  great  lion  also  roamed  over  the  same 
region,  as  did  also  a  great  elk,  much  exceeding  in  size 
our  now-existing  elk  of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  Many 
other  very  remarkable  forms  also  flourished,  making  to- 
gether a  list  of  far  too  great  length  for  enumeration  in  the 
present  connection. 

Passing  down  rapidly  next  through  the  Tertiary  sys- 
tem of  the  Cenozoic  age,  we  discover  that  the  first  mam- 
mals of  all  arose  at  its  dawn.  They  came  in  immense 
numbers,  in  swarms,  indicating  that  the  revolutions  then 
going  on  on  the  earth  gave  rise  to  a  marked  rapidity  of 
change  in  the  varied  representatives  of  that  group.  Dur- 
ing those  times  climates  were  adjusting  themselves; 
enormous  and  extensive  migration  of  species  was  going 
on;  and  as  a  result  thereof  an  extinction  of  all  those 
forms  which  could  not  withstand  the  commingling  of  the 
various  geographical  faunas.  Herbivorous  animals  pre- 
dominate but  others  are  not  wanting,  and  a  vast  array  of 
orders  and  species  ranged  over  the  central  portion  of  this 
country.  Lemurne  monkeys  were  even  to  be  seen,  though 
the  earlier  forms  of  men  had  apparently  not  yet  made 
their  appearance.  Indeed  it  is  the  mid-regions  of  the 
United  States,  and  in  the  freshwater  basins  there  found 
that  we  find  the  very  richest  deposits  wherein  occur  the 
fullest  records  of  the  mammalian  faunas  of  the  Cenozoic 


ON  BIOLOGY.  49 

age  in  America.  In  the  bad  lands  of  Nebraska,  for  in- 
stance, have  been  discovered  the  fossil  remains  of  tigers, 
camels,  rodents,  hyenas,  panthers,  wolf,  deer,  horses,  rhi- 
neros,  and  a  variety  of  more  generalized  forms. 

But  among  the  main  points  to  be  remembered  about  all 
those  mammals  of  the  Tertiary  system  is,  that  they  arose 
from  small,  non-placental  forms  which  flourished  during 
the  latter  half  of  the  Meozoic  age,  and  that  those  forms 
were  in  many  ways  yet  intimately  affined  with  birds  and 
reptiles.  Reptile,  indeed,  was  the  main  stem,  and  from 
it  branched  off  during  the  Triassic  the  bird  and  mammal 
stock,  and  the  linking  types  were  to  be  found  upon  every 
hand.  Passing  through  the  enormous  lapse  of  time  rep- 
resented by  the  Cretaceans  of  Mesozoic,  and  successively 
through  the  Eocene,  Miocene  and  Pliocene  of  the  Ter- 
tiary, we  find  in  the  several  parts  of  the  United  States,  at 
least,  that  from  those  small  generalized  types  were  pro- 
duced the  ancestors  of  the  more  modern  mammalian 
forms,  a  number  of  which  have  already  been  given  above. 
Among  other  remarkable  forms  there  existed,  for 
example,  in  the  Pliocene  of  the  Niobrara  Basin  of  our 
Bad  Land  territory,  several  species  of  horses,  one  of 
which  was  only  two  feet  high;  camels  of  ancient  type, 
and  it  is  now  recognized  that  both  horse  and  camel  orig- 
inated upon  this  continent  and  not  in  the  Orient  as  most 
naturally  suppose  to  be  the  case.  As  many  of  these  early 
mammals  evolved,  there  was  a  gradual  increase  of  the 
brain-mass  in  many  of  the  species;  an  elaboration  of  other 
structures,  as  the  teeth  and  feet;  and  a  general  tendency 
toward  the  establishment  of  modern  types.  Indeed,  in 
all  Nature  there  is  no  more  engaging  chapter  in  paleon- 
tology than  the  great  lesson  taught  by  the  specimens,  and 
specimens  in  abundance,  showing  the  evolvement  in  time 
of  our  modern  horse  as  it  has  passed  from  the  eohippus 
of  the  Eocene,  an  animal  no  bigger  than 
a  fox,  with  its  four-toed  feet  in  front  and  its  three-toed 
feet  behind,  and  with  its  simple  tooth-structure,  through 
the  orohippus  of  the  Middle  Eocene;  the  mesohippus  of  the 
Lower  Miocene;  the  miohippus  of  the  Miocene;  and  so 
on  up  to  recent  time  where  we  have  the  horses  of  the 
present  day.  The  gradual  structural  changes  are  perfect, 
and  the  shad'ng  from  one  series  of  fossil  skeletal  remains 
to  the  next  succeeding  species  is  quite  as  imperceptible 
as  it  is  marvelous.  And  yet  how  widely  separated  are 
the  extremes,  and  what  enormous  lapses  of  time  does 
the  entire  process  represent.  Cope  has  traced,  by  means 
of  similar  material,  the  development  of  the  American 


50  LECTURES 

camels  in  the  same  manner;  and  it  is  a  most  extraordi- 
nary picture  when  we  come  to  study  the  clearness  with 
which  this  fossil  material  will  permit  us  to  trace  the 
branching  stocks  of  oxen,  deer,  antelopes,  hogs,  and  their 
allies,  or  the  ungulates  as  they  are  known,  from  the  gen- 
eralized common  root-stock,  the  amblypoda,  to  their 
modern  forms.  Other  mammalian  groups  have  been 
worked  out  in  the  same  way,  as  far  as  our  discoveries 
will  admit,  and  doubtless  in  the  future  many  of  the  gaps 
will  be  filled  in,  and  that  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
chapters  in  the  study  of  such  remains,  for  the  kinships  of 
each  new  species  as  it  comes  to  light  can  be  either  very 
closely  guessed  at,  or  its  affinities  are  so  strikingly 
apparent,  at  first  glance,  as  to  admit  of  no  manner  of 
doubt  in  the  minds  of  all  biologists. 

It  is  important  to  remember,  in  connection  with  this, 
that  America,  as  was  the  case  in  other  parts  of  the  world, 
passed  through  many  remarkable  physical  revolutions 
during  the  Tertiary  age.  In  Cretaceous  time,  or  just 
before  the  Tertiary,  it  is  known  that  this  country  was 
divided  into  two  great  continents  separated  by  a  vast  and 
shallow  sea  covering  all  that  area  now  familiar 
to  us  as  the  Western  Plains  and  Plateau  region. 
Subsequently  mid-continental  upheaval  took  place 
and  this  cretaceous  sea  became  slowly  obliterated,  and 
the  two  aforesaid  continents  joined  each  other.  The 
tertiary  period  is  now  inaugurated  by  the  Eocene  epoch, 
(and  the  shading  of  the  one  into  the  other,  that  is,  the 
Mesozoic  and  Cenozoic  was  most  gradual),  during  which 
time  great  freshwater  lakes  existed  in  certain  parts  of 
the  West,  which  during  the  Eocene  were  drained  by 
continental  upheaval.  Later  Miocene  lakes  were  formed 
by  a  corresponding  depression  over  the  region  of  the 
plains,  and  still  later,  toward  the  close  of  the  same 
period,  the  entire  coast  chain  of  mountains  of  the  Pacific 
Coast  were  formed  by  an  uprising  and  folding  of  the  sea 
bottom.  Other  enormous  changes  took  place,  and  an 
authority  at  my  hand  states:  "That  from  the  end  of 
the  Cretaceous  to  the  end  of  the  Tertiary  there  was  a 
gradual  upheaval  of  the  whole  western  half  of  the  con- 
tinent, by  which  the  axis,  or  lowest  line,  of  the  great 
interior  continental  basin  was  transferred  more  and  more 
eastward  to  its  present  position,  the  Mississippi  River. 
Probably,  correlative  with  this  upheaval  of  the  western 
half  of  the  continent  was  the  down  sinking  of  the  Mid- 
Pacific  bottom,  indicated  by  coral  reefs.  Also  as  a  con- 
sequence of  the  same  upheaval  the  erosive  power  of  the 


ON  BIOLOGY.  51 

rivers  was  greatly  increased,  and  thus  were  formed  those 
deep  canons  in  the  regions  (New  Mexico,  Colorado  and 
Arizona),  where  the  elevation  was  greatest.  Thus  the 
down  sinking  of  the  Mid-Pacific  bottom,  the  bodily  up- 
heaval of  the  Pacific  side  of  the  continent,  and  the  down 
cutting  of  the  river  channels  into  those  wonderful  canons 
are  closely  connected  with  each  other." 

It  must  not  be  understood  that  these  vast  depressions 
and  upheavals  of  great  areas  of  territory  were  performed 
in  a  rapid  manner,  for  they  required  ages  for  their  com- 
pletion; indeed,  In  several  parts  of  the  earth  very  much 
the  same  thing  is  going  on  under  the  very  eye  of  science. 
The  coast  of  Norway,  for  example,  is  now  rising  at  an 
average  rate  of  two  and  a  half  feet  per  century.  Let 
that  continue  for  1,000  centuries,  and  you  may 
easily  understand  what  I  mean  by  a  geologic  upheaval 
of  a  land  area.  Still  those  great  revolutions,  notwith- 
standing the  gradualn^ss  of  their  performance,  did  pow- 
erfully affect  in  time  the  various  faunae  of  the  country, 
and  greatly  influenced  mammalian  migration.  In  numer- 
ous instances  those  migrations  have  been  carefully 
worked  out  and  traced,  traced  as  the  several  mammalian 
faunae  influenced  by  one  cause  or  another  passed  from  one 
part  of  a  continent  to  adjacent  land  areas.  Those  changes 
in  the  habitats  of  entire  groups  of  mammals  went  on  in 
obedience  to  certain  ever-acting  natural  laws,  for  thou- 
sands upon  thousands  of  years,  down  to  the  present  day. 
Many  types,  as  we  have  seen,  became  utterly  extinct; 
others  by  a  slow  evolution  have  left  descendants  in  no 
way  resembling  their  original  ancestors,  while  as  a  whole 
the  entire  host  of  the  world's  mammalian  faunae  has  led 
up  through  those  untold  ages  to  quite  perfectly  explain 
the  laws  of  animal  distribution  as  I  have  sketched  them 
for  you  to-day,  and  to  thoroughly  account  for  the  pres- 
ence in  various  parts  of  the  earth  of  the  animals  as  tney 
now  exist  there.  And,  one  other  very  important  thing 
must  be  noted,  and  it  is  that  mammals,  as  has  been  the 
case  with  most  all  other  organized  forms,  since  their  first 
appearance  on  the  earth  have  passed  from  types  of  a 
highly  generalized  structure,  by  evolution,  to  their  des- 
cendants of  modern  times  wherein  the  structure  is  seen  to 
be  far  more  highly  specialized.  This  passage  from  the 
simpler  anatomical  forms  of  mammals,  all  of  which  are 
now  extinct,  to  the  more  highly  specialized  types  of  the 
existing  faunas,  has  taken  almost  inconceivable  ages  of 
time. 

What  has  just  been  said   about    the    evolution    of    the 


52  LECTURES 

mammalia  is,  with  equal  truth,  applicable  to  the  entire 
history  of  organic  life  upon  the  globe,  from  its  very  be- 
ginning as  far  back  as  we  have  been  enabled  to  trace  it 
down  to  the  present  instant.  Our  knowledge  of  the 
life-system  of  the  earliest  Archaean  time  is  exceedingly 
meager,  but  when  we  come  to  examine  the  old  primor- 
dial oeaches  of  the  Silurian  epochs  we  meet  with  fossil 
forms  that  are  the  representatives  of  the  faume  which 
figured  at  or  very  near  the  dawn  of  life  upon  earth,  They 
are  the  primordial  ancestors  of  all  the  main  branches  of 
animals,  except  vertebrates,  which  are  to  be  found  in 
recent  times.  They  are  the  earliest,  structurally  the 
simplest,  remains  known  to  the  biologist.  They  are  the 
elements  from  which  Nature  has  bulk  up  the  vast  num- 
ber of  complicated  organisms  of  our  own  era,  and  it  is 
easily  demonstrable  that  it  was  many  millions  of  years 
ago  that  they  existed.  And  yet,  even  this  more  or  less 
varied  fauna  of  Silurian  time  must  have  been  derived 
from  still  .simpler  forms,  the  history  of  which  reaches  far, 
far  back  into  the  vast  unknown— the  unwritten  pages  of 
geologic  record. 

By  an  overwhelming  number  of  facts,  then,  biologists 
of  our  own  and  of  past  times  have  demonstrated  beyond  all 
manner  of  doubt  that  the  distribution  of  all  animals  in 
space,  or  in  other  words  the  existing  world's  faunas,  is  in 
accordance  with  certain  known  laws,  and  that  distribu- 
tion is  wholly  explained  by  the  distribution  of  all  ani- 
mals that  have  existed  in  time;  or  in  other  words  the  ex- 
liuct  world's  faunas  which,  in  turn,  were  also  distributed 
over  the  various  regions  of  the  earth  in  accordance  with 
laws,  also  largely  known  to  us,  are  essentially  the  same 
as  those  laws  which  account  for  the  modern  distribution 
of  organic  life.  One  of  the  most  philosophic  living  think- 
ers in  biology  tersely  paragraphed  our  knowledge  upon 
this  point  when  he  said: 

"So  long  as  each  species  of  organism  was 
supposed  to  have  had  an  independent  origin, 
the  place  it  occupied  on  the  earth's  surface 
or  the  epoch  where  it  first  appeared  had 
little  significance.  It  was,  indeed,  perceived  that 
the  organization  and  constitution  of  each  animal  or  plant 
must  be  adapted  to  the  physical  conditions  in  which  it 
was  placed;  but  this  consideration  only  accounted  for  a 
few  of  the  broader  features  of  distribution,  while  the 
great  body  of  the  facts,  their  countless  anomalies  and 
curious  details  remained  wholly  inexplicable.  But  the 
theory  of  evolution  and  gradual  development  of  organic 


ON  BIOLOGY.  53 

forms  by  descent  and  variation  completely  changes  the 
aspect  of  the  question,  and  invests  the  facts  of  distri- 
bution with  special  importance.  The  time  when  a  group 
or  a  species  first  appeared,  the  place  of  its  origin  and  the 
area  it  now  occupies  upon  the  earth,  become  essential 
portions  of  the  history  of  the  universe. 

"The  course  of  study  initiated  and  so  largely  developed 
by  Mr.  Darwin  has  now  shown  us  the  marvelous  inter- 
dependence of  every  part  of  nature.  Not  only  is  each 
organism  necessarily  related  to  and  affected  by  all  things, 
living  and  dead,  that  surround  it,  but  every  detail  of 
form  and  structure,  of  color,  food,  and  habits,  must — it 
is  now  held— have  been  developed  in  harmony  with,  and 
to  a  great  extent  as  a  result  of,  the  organic  and  inorganic 
environments.  Distribution  becomes,  therefore,  as  es- 
sential a  part  of  the  science  of  life  as  anatomy  or 
physiology.  It  shows  us,  as  it  were,  the  form  and  struc- 
ture of  the  life  of  the  world  considered  as  one  vast 
organism,  and  it  enables  us  to  comprehend,  however  im- 
perfectly, the  processes  of  development  and  variation  dur- 
ing past  ages  which  have  resulted  in  the  actual  state  of 
things. 

"It  thus  affords  one  of  the  best  tests  of  the  truth  of  our 
theories  of  development;  because  the  countless  facts  pre- 
sented by  the  distribution  of  living  things  in  present  and 
past  time  must  be  explicable  in  accordance  with  any  true 
theory,  or,  at  least,  must  never  directly  contradict  it." 
(Wallace,  Art.  Distribution,  Brit.  Encyclop.,  9th  Ed.  V. 
VII,  p.  267.) 

These  truths,  so  well  expressed,  go  far  toward  explain- 
ing the  relation  that  the  science  of  biology  bears  to  the 
science  of  geology,  for  it  clearly  shows  that 
it  is  chiefly  through  the  interdependent  bi- 
ologic science  of  palaeontology.  At  the  dawn 
of  life  the  earliest  organisms  were  of  forms  most  simple, 
and  from  them  grew  a  mighty  tree  with  myriads  of 
branches,  limbs  and  twigs,  and  as  these  became  differen- 
tiated during  enormous  stretches  of  time  they  produced, 
in  the  majority  of  cases,  groups  of  organisms  which  were 
more  and  more  specialized  and  complex  in  structure.  So 
that  during  the  almost  inconceivable  lapse  of  time  repre- 
senting earth's  physical  history,  branches  of  this  great 
tree  have  gradually  produced  such  remarkably  specialized 
groups  of  beings,  as  modern  teleostean  fishes,  modern 
reptiles,  modern  birds,  modern  mammals,  and,  as  a  fam- 
ily of  the  latter,  modern  men. 

The  terminal  twiglets  of  this  vast  organic  growth  and 


54  LECTURES 

its  branching  life-descent  are  now  seen  in  the  living 
faunae  existing  upon  the  surface  of  the  world  of  our  day, 
or  teeming  in  our  oceans  and  inland  waters.  Palaeontol- 
ogy, the  science  of  the  organic  forms  of  the  past,  imper- 
ceptibly merges  into  zoology,  the  science  of  the  organic 
forms  now  in  existence.  And,  this  growth  has  never  been 
checked  for  an  instant;  the  same  laws  are  now  in  opera- 
tion as  have  been  in  operation  throughout  all  geologic 
times  and  ages;  many  animals  now  in  existence  are 
doomed  to  utter  extinction,  some  in  the  near  future, 
others  in  ages  to  come.  A  host  of  others  will  send  down 
into  futurity  their  descendants,  and  from  them  will  un- 
doubtedly arise,  in  time,  new  forms  to  furnish  the  world 
with  still  different  species,  in  many  cases  totally  unlike 
their  nowaday  ancestors,  as  those  ancestors,  the  species 
now  with  us,  are  totally  unlike  the  forms  from  which 
they  in  turn  were  derived.  Even  the  topographical  phys- 
ical aspects  of  the  world  itself  must  change,  as  many, 
many  of  those  changes  are  now  gradually  going  on  and 
are  well  known  to  science;  their  contemplation,  and  care- 
ful study,  and  comparison  with  the  happenings  of  past 
ages,  which  in  so  many  instances  are  so  clearly  written 
upon  Nature's  historic  pages,  form  one  of  the  very  grand- 
est fields  of  research  open  to  the  intellectual  activity  of 
the  mini  of  man. 


III. 

Its  Value  as  a  Study. 


We  have  seen  in  the  first  two  lectures  of  the  present 
course  what  a  very  wide  field  of  inquiry  the  science  of 
biology  is  now  considered  to  cover.     Indeed,  any  one  of 
its  four    main   divisions    of    morphology,    distribution, 
physiology  or  aetiology  constitutes  a  vast  science  in  itself. 
We  saw  how  morphology  dealt  with  the  entire  structure, 
both  gross  and  minute,  of  all   animal  and  plant  forms  as 
well  as  the  relation  of  those  structures  to  each  other  in 
the  organism.      And,   when    we    come  to  think  of  the 
organic  complexity  of  the  great  majority  of  the  myriads 
of  different  animals  now  living  upon  the  earth,  such  a 
task,  alone,  as  unraveling  their  various  plans  of  structure 
would  at  first  sight  appear  to  be  the  labor  of  untold  ages 
for  an  infinite  number  of  minds  and  hands.     This  un- 
doubtedly would  be  the  case  were  it  not  for  the  fact— a 
fact  long  since  known  to  biologists— that  throughout  the 
entire  series  of  animal  forms  and   throughout  the   entire 
series  of  plant  forms,  both  living  and  extinct  in  either 
case,  and  from  the  most  simple  type  to  the  most  complex, 
there  prevails  the  same  fundamental  uniformity  in  the 
plan  of  structure.     We  may,  for  example,  select  any  con- 
venient form  from  the  animal  series,  as  a  rabbit  or  a  cat, 
and  after  we  have   made  a  complete    study  of  its  entire 
structure  we  have    the  key  that  unlocks  the  history  of 
the  whole.     From  the   cat,  for  instance,  we  may  ascend 
the  scale,  step  by  step,  through  the  higher  types,  to  in- 
clude man  himself,  and  it  will  be  found  that  in  the  skele- 
tons of  all  the  bones  are  identically  the  same  and  require 
but  a  common    descriptive  nomenclature.     The  viscera 
and  organs  of  the  body  are  comparable  throughout.     The 
arteries,  veins,  nerves  and   lymphatics  in  a  cat,  a  lemur, 
an  ape  and  in  man  are  strictly  comparable,    morphologi- 
cally, and  perform  identically  the  same  functions.  There 
are  upward  of  150  pairs  of  muscles  or  more   in  a  cat,  all 
of  which  have  been  carefully  described  and  named,  yet 

55 


56  LECTURES 

the  corresponding  ones  pertain  to  the  physical  organiza- 
tion of  man,  and  no  change  in  their  nomenclature  is 
demanded. 

And  so  we  might  pass  on  through  the  entire  anatomy 
of  these  several  types;  but  this  is  not  all,  for  we  may 
bring  to  bear  all  our  most  delicate  instruments  of  pre- 
cision, and  by  the  aid  of  the  microscope  and  chemical  re- 
agents reduce  the  body  of  a  cat,  or  any  of  the  other  forms 
mentioned,  to  their  ultimate  elements,  and  the  very 
morphological  units — the  cells — are  the  same  in  a  cat  as 
they  are  in  a  man;  the  same  in  a  lemur  as  they  are  in  an 
ape;  the  same  in  an  ape  as  they  are  in  a  cat. 

But,  as  we  are  all  aware,  the  matter  has  not  been  al- 
lowed to  rest  here,  for  the  development  of  all  these  types 
has  been  carefully  studied;  and  in  tracing  this  back  in 
man.  in  the  cat,  in  the  ape  and  the  rest,  we  come  to  a 
stage  in  each  where  the  forms  presented  to  us  are  quite 
indistinguishable.  One  cannot  help  being  impressed  by 
the  expression  of  wonder  seen  in  the  face  of  him  who,  for 
the  first  time,  views  accurate  drawings  of  a  tortoise,  a 
chicken,  a  dog,  and  a  man,  at  the  fourth  week  of  their 
development.  It  requires  the  eye  of  a  thoroughly  prac- 
ticed investigator  to  tell  the  one  from  the  other,  you  may 
be  well  assured;  for  at  that  stage  the  tall  even  offers  no 
distinction  and  is  quite  as  well  developed  in  man  as  it  is 
in  a  dog.  Carrying  our  investigations  still  further  in  this 
matter  of  development  we  are  led  to  the  fact  that  all 
animals  have  their  origin  in  the  simple  cell. 

"Moreover,"  as  Huxley  tells  us,  "the  investigations  of 
the  last  three-quarters  of  a  century  have  proved  that 
similar  inquiries,  carried  out  through  all  the  different 
kinds  of  animals  which  are  met  with  in  Nature,  will  lead 
us,  not  in  one  straight  series  but  by  many  roads,  step  by 
step,  gradation  by  gradation,  from  man  at  the  summit 
to  specks  of  animated  jelly  at  the  bottom  of  the  series. 
So  that  the  idea  of  Leibnitz  and  of  Bonnet,  that  animals 
form  a  great  scale  of  being,  in  which  there  are  a  series 
of  gradations  from  the  most  complicated  form  to  the 
lowest  and  simplest;  that  idea,  though  not  exactly  in  the 
form  in  which  it  was  propounded  by  those  philosophers, 
turns  out  to  be  substantially  correct.  More  than  this, 
when  biologists  pursue  their  investigations  into  the  vege- 
table world,  they  find  that  they  can*  in  the  same  way, 
follow  cut  the  structure  of  the  plant,  from  the  most 
gigantic  and  complicated  trees  down  through  a  similar 
series  of  gradations  until  they  arrive  at  specks  of  ani- 


ON  BIOLOGY  57 

mated  jelly,  which  they  are  puzzled  to  distinguish  from 
those  specks  which  they  reached  by  the  animal  road." 

This  great  truth,  so  clearly  stated  by  Huxley,  no  doubt 
likewise  expresses  what  has  been  the  manner  of  growth 
and  development  of  plants  and  animals  in  the  history  of 
the  earth.  No  one  who  has  properly  examined  the  evi- 
dence can  now  doubt  for  a  moment  that  in  the  beginning 
of  the  world  the  primitive  material  from  which  all  ani- 
mals and  plants  have  since  arisen  was  the  absolutely 
organless  protoplasm.  In  other  words  we  may  say  that 
the  history  of  the  origin,  growth  and  development  of  all 
living  forms  in  time  is  epitomized  in  the  history  of  the 
origin,  growth  and  development  of  existing  plants  and 
animals;  just  as  the  history  of  the  origin,  growth  and 
development  of  any  individual  species  of  animal  is  an 
epitome  of  the  history  of  the  origin,  growth  and  develop- 
ment of  the  tribe  to  which  that  species  belongs. 

Passing  to  physiology,  another  one  of  our  main  divi- 
sions of  biology,  we  find  all  that  holds  true  of  structure 
also  holds  true  of  the  functions  of  the  structures;  and,  in 
the  higher  or  more  complex  types  of  animals  the  func- 
tions performed  by  the  organs  are  complicated,  but  as  we 
study  them  in  passing  down  the  series  we  find  they  be- 
come gradually  more  and  more  simple  in  their  perform- 
ance. Even  the  mental  faculties  form  no  exception  to 
this  rule,  for  notwithstanding  the  marvelous  workings  of 
the  mind  and  the  brain  in  the  highest  types  of  man,  those 
faculties  can  be  traced  down  through  the  animal  series 
until  at  last  we  meet  with  their  very  rudiments  as  per- 
formed by  the  brains  of  the  lowest  forms  of  animal  life. 
It  was  the  distinguished  British  biologist,  Mr.  George  J. 
Romanes,  who  said  in  an  admirable  article  published  some 
six  or  seven  years  ago  in  the  North  American  Review: 

"After  centuries  of  intellectual  conquest  in  all  regions 
of  the  phenomenal  universe,  man  has  at  last  begun  to 
find  that  he  may  apply  in  a  new  and  most  unexpected 
manner  the  adage  of  antiquity,  'know  thyself.'  For  he 
has  begun  to  perceive  a  strong  probability,  if  not  an  ac- 
tual certainty,  that  his  own  living  nature  is  identical  in 
kind  with  the  nature  of  all  other  life,  and  that  even  the 
most  amazing  side  of  that  nature — nay,  the  most  amazing 
of  all  things  within  the  reach  of  his  knowledge,  the 
human  mind  itself — is  but  the  topmost  inflorescence  of 
one  mighty  growth  whose  roots  and  stem  and  many 
branches  are  sunk  in  the  abyss  of  planetary  time." 

I  have  never  been  in  sympathy  with  those  observers 
who  would  draw  hard  and  fast  lines,  the  lines  of  instinct 


58  LECTURES 

and  of  reason,  between  the  lower  forms  of  animal  life  on 
the  one  hand  and  man  on  the  other.  For,  I  believe,  as 
great  and  as  evident  as  the  gap  is  which  separates  the 
manifestations  of  the  mental  faculties  of  the  very  lowest 
types  of  humanity  and  the  very  highest  types  of  those 
vertebrates  next  in  order  to  them  is  simply  a  difference  of 
degree  and  not  of  kind. 

We  have  also  seen,  in  a  former  lecture,  how  the  study 
of  another  primary  branch  of  biology,  or  the  question  of 
distribution,  explains  the  laws  which  govern  the  dis- 
persal of  animals  and  plants  over  the  face  of  the  globe 
and  in  the  great  bodies  of  water  of  the  earth,  not  only 
for  existing  faunae,  but  for  the  vast  faunas  that  have 
existed  since  life  first  appeared  in  the  world,  and  which 
are  now  for  the  most  part  extinct. 

Finally,  in  the  fourth  division  of  the  science  of  biology, 
or  that  is  in  aetiology,  we  saw  how  from  the  consideration 
of  the  facts  of  the  science  we  passed  to  the  task  of  deter- 
mining the  causes  of  those  facts.  It  is  now  thoroughly 
appreciated  that  biological  phenomena  can  be  explained, 
in  so  far  as  our  present  knowledge  will  permit,  by  consid- 
ering the  causes  as  simply  special  cases  of  general  physi- 
cal laws.  There  is  no  question  dealt  with  under  the 
head  of  aetiology  of  greater  importance  than  the  investi- 
gation of  the  origin  of  living  matter,  and  upon  entering 
that  field  we  meet  with  one  group  of  investigators  who 
still  adhere  to  the  theory  of  abiogenesis,  or  what  in  real- 
ity is  the  old  theory  of  spontaneous  generation,  and  an- 
other group  who  are  the  -supporters  of  the  biogenetic 
view,  which  contends  that  all  living  beings  have  been 
derived  from  pre-existing  forms  of  life.  This  latter  is 
termed  the  theory  of  biogenesis.  Very  close  reasoning  is 
done  upon  both  sides,  but  at  the  bottom  of  it  all  it  can- 
not be  said  that  we  are  in  possession  of  any  positive 
knowledge  upon  the  subject.  Still,  I  believe  it  lies 
within  the  pale  of  attainable  knowledge,  and  is  a  problem 
that  will  be  satisfactorily  solved  by  the  biologists  of  the 
future. 

With  this  brief  recapitulation  of  the  scope  of  biology  be- 
fore us,  we  now  may  ask  of  what  value,  as  a  study,  does  this 
greatscience,  this  comprehensive  department  of  human 
knowledge  offer  to  mankind  at  large?  To  properly  answer 
this  it  will  be  necessary  to  say  a  few  words  upon  the  ques- 
tion as  to  wherein  lies  the  value  of  the  pursuit  of  any 
study,  and  apply  our  finding  to  the  pursuit  of  the  study 
of  biology.  With  respect  to  any  of  the  sciences,  my 
opinion  has  always  been  that  the  discoveries  of  truths 


ON  BIOLOGY.  59 

and  facts  constitute  the  most  important,  the  mos*;  practi- 
cal and  the  most  noble  field  into  which  men  can  throw 
their  best  mental  and  physical  energies.  History  has 
long  ago  proved  that  however  apparently  a  present-day- 
discovered  fact  may  seem  to  be  of  utter  worthlessness, 
owing  to  its  non-applicability  to  utilitarian  ends,  such 
facts  invariably  come  into  the  very  best  play  in  the  hands 
of  succeeding  generations.  Thousands  upon  thousands 
of  examples  might  be  cited  to  sustain  this  statement, 
drawing  them  from  every  department  of  human 
knowledge.  The  only  thing  demanded  is  that  the  dis- 
covery be  a  real  truth,  a  living  fact.  Such  discovered 
facts  have  often  lain  idle  for  a  generation  or  more  when, 
owing  to  later  discoveries  of,  perhaps,  a  related  kind, 
they  at  last  are  brought  into  use  with  amazing  power,  and 
frequently  prove  to  be  of  lasting  value  and  worth  to  all 
humanity. 

Now,  for  more  than  a  century  past,  the  most  extraor- 
dinary thing  about  the  discovery  of  biological  facts  is 
that  in  the  vast  majority  of  instances,  comparatively 
speaking,  they  so  rapidly  come  to  meet  some  utilitarian 
end  in  one  or  another  line  of  human  pursuits. 

In  the  first  place  very  often  the  discovery  of  a  new  fact 
in  biology  has  the  tendency  to  eradicate  some  wrong  idea 
and  replace  that  wrong  idea  by  the  right  one.  The  first 
may  have  been  entertained  for  ages,  by  men  all  over  the 
world,  and  have  been  the  source  of  much  bad  practice 
and,  perhaps,  of  downright  misery  to  generations  of  peo- 
ple. No  one  for  an  instant  will  question  the  utility  and 
importance  of  this,  inasmuch  as  ideas  rule  the  world  and 
it  is  of  the  highest  import  that  those  ideas  should  be  the 
correct  ones.  In  short  the  world  can  only  be  made  happy 
when  truth  prevails,  and  the  foundations  of  all  our 
theories  of  things,  all  our  practices  and  all  our  ideas  are 
governed  by  truth  and  fact. 

To  instance  my  meaning,  human  history  offers  no  bet- 
ter example,  as  a  whole,  than  the  contest  that  has  been 
going  on  for  ages  between  man,  upon  the  one  hand,  and 
the  entire  category  of  diseases  and  injuries  to  which  his 
organism  is  subject,  upon  the  other.  In  the  early  history 
of  medicine  and  in  the  early  history  of  humanity,  hosts 
upon  hosts  of  men,  women  and  children  perished  from 
diseases,  during  every  generation,  from  the  sheer  lack  of 
knowledge  on  the  part  of  their  fellows  of  what  was  the 
correct  thing  to  do  for  them.  But  what  was  worse  than 
all  this,  when  men  calling  themselves  physicians  essayed 
during  those  times  to  combat  the  results  of  injuries  or 


60  LECTURES 

the  ravages  of  disease  in  their  fellows,  such  was  the  na- 
ture of  their  knowledge  and  the  mtagerness  of  its  amount, 
that  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases  the  would-be  helper 
was  a  far  greater  danger  to  the  sufferer  than  the  disease 
with  which  he  was  afflicted.  In  truth,  it  may  be  stated, 
that  in  the  day  to  which  I  refer  the  gentlemen  of  the 
medical  profession  were  responsible  for  the  destruction  of 
the  lives  of  a  greater  number  of  people  than  was  disease 
itself.  The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek,  for  the  constitutions 
of  those  attacked  by  disease  had  not  only  to  contend  with 
that  disease,  but,  in  addition  thereto,  with  the  medical 
man  who  came  to  cure  them.  This  is  not  surprising 
when  we  come  to  think  how  limited  was  the  then  knowl- 
edge of  the  laws  of  sanitation;  of  the  real  causes  of  many 
of  the  infectious  maladies;  and,  finally,  which  is  the  more 
important  of  all,  the  prevalence  of  the  most  erroneous 
ideas  of  both  the  science  of  anatomy  and  the  science  of 
physiology. 

Since  those  times  biology  has  grown  apace,  and  both 
medicine  and  surgery  or,  I  may  say,  the  profession  of 
medicine  in  its  entirety,  has  felt  the  remarkable  advances 
made  along  the  lines  I  have  just  indicated.  Not  only 
has  medicine  favorably  felt  the  nature  of  those  advances, 
but  in  that  most  important  and  practical  rield  of  human 
endeavor,  has  been  clearly  shown  the  value  of  biological 
study.  Through  such  studies  alone,  it  has  been  proven 
beyond  all  manner  of  doubt  that  infectious  disorders  are 
caused  by  living  organisms,  and  by  combating  them,  in 
one  way  or  another,  those  disorders  may  be  either  cured 
or  prevented  altogether.  An  ever  increasing  knowledge 
of  the  structure  and  physiology  of  all  animals,  both  high 
and  low  in  the  scale  of  organization,  has,  moreover,  al- 
lowed pathologists  to  trace,  in  some  instances,  the  more 
complicated  fofms  of  disease  in  men  to  their  rudimentary 
phases  in  the  lower  animals.  It  is  clear  that  by  such 
processes  we  will  in  time  be  enabled  to  arrive  at  a  com- 
plete history  and  knowledge  of  many  of  the  affections  of 
the  various  structures  of  our  bodies.  And  this  has  come 
about  by  the  ever  increasing  biological  investigations  into 
the  anatomy  and  physiology  of  all  forms  of  animal  life. 
Not  only  have  such  biological  studies  been  of  the  greatest 
importance  to  man  in  the  way  of  his  own  personal  wel- 
fare, comfort  and  happiness,  but  they  have  extended  to 
his  material  belongings,  for  the  possession  of  such  in- 
creased knowledge  has  been  of  the  most  unlimited  service 
in  the  treatment  of  the  infectious  disorders  and  the 
surgical  injuries  to  which  all  the  domesticated  animals 


ON  BIOLOGY.  61 

are  liable.  Moreover,  the  investigations  in  those  fields 
have  again  reacted,  and  to  the  end  of  still  further 
elucidating  a  number  of  the  more  complex  problems  in 
human  pathology.  Surely  there  is  no  one  among  us 
to-day  who  for  a  moment  doubts  the  value  of  the  biologi- 
cal researches  that  are  now  almost  hourly  being  made 
upon  the  structure  and  life-histories  of  myriads  of  germs 
that  cause  disease;  or  of  the  value  of  the  labors  of  the 
world's  "corps  of  patient  biologists  who  are  continually 
engaged  in  furnishing  us  with  a  fuller  understanding  of 
the  morphology  and  physiology  of  those  structures  which 
those  many  species  of  germs  are  prone  to  attack.  Such 
studies  are  most  assuredly  fraught  with  results  of  great 
practical  value,  and  are  of  the  very  highest  importance. 
Justice  to  this  subject  could  hardly  be  attained  to  in  an 
entire  course  of  lectures,  and  the  interesting  field  it 
covers  is  reflected  in  an  extremely  rich  and  varied 
literature. 

Again,  the  value  of  the  most  exhaustive  researches  in 
general  morphology  can  hardly  be  questioned;  for,  in  the 
first  place,  as  I  have  just  shown,  they  not  only  have  the 
great  practical  value  of  elucidating  the  more  obscure 
points  in  man's  own  organization,  but  through  the  enor- 
mous array  of  facts  arrived  at,  biologists  have  been 
enabled  to  fix  beyond  all  peradventure  of  a  doubt  the  po- 
sition man  occupies  in  Nature  and  his  true  relation  to  the 
universe  at  large.  This  has  had  the  effect  of  completely 
explpding  that  old  traditional  notion,  that  ancient  myth, 
the  embodiment  of  the  idea  that  man  constituted  the 
great  central  figure  in  Nature,  and  held  a  position  alto- 
geth'er  peculiar;  that  structurally,  physiologically,  men- 
tally and  psychologically  he  was  completely  disassociated 
from  all  the  rest  of  the  living  forms  of  this  world;  indeed, 
that  he  was  hardly  of  this  world  at  all,  but  was  to  be 
considered  as  simply  a  being  existing  here  only  tempo- 
rarily and  but  very  remotely  related  co  any  and  all  things 
of  earth,  upon  which  he  had  but  recently  come  and  upon 
which  his  race  expected  to  sojourn  as  probationers  but  a 
comparatively  brief  time;  and,  finally,  what  was  more  or 
quite  as  erroneous  as  all  the  rest  of  this  strange  tradi- 
tional notion  put  together,  that,  somehow  or  other,  he 
thus  being  apart  from  Nature  all  the  rest  of  the  world 
had  been  especially  created  either  for  his  personal  bene- 
fit; or  as  affording  him  an  array  of  natural  objects  for  hi 
especial  amusement;  or  for,  as  I  say,  a  temporary  abiding 
place,  tastefully  fitted  up,  to  answer  as  a  habitation  dur- 
ing his  brief  sojourn  upon  the  earth.  Biological  research 


62  LECTURES 

has  here  most  conclusively  shown,  whether  It  be  tasteful 
for  us  to  face  the  truth  and  the  facts  In  the  premises  or 
not,  that  not  a  single  factor  in  this  old  traditional  notion, 
which  has  been  told  to  so  many  of  us,  has  the  slightest 
semblance  to  verity  to  recommend  it.  Biological  research 
has  given  us  the  true  relation  that  man  bears  to  Nature, 
and  has  most  clearly  demonstrated  where  his  place  is 
there.  For  it  has  shown  that  no  such  things  exist  in  Na- 
ture as  what  may  be  called  "central  figures,"  and  man's 
position  in  the  universe  is  no  more  peculiar  than  is  the 
representative  of  any  other  family  of  the  class  to  which 
he  belongs — that  is,  the  class  mammalia.  Outside  of  his 
own  family  man  is  both  structurally  and  physiologically 
most  closely  linked  to  those  mammalian  forms  in  the 
group  next  below  him,  or  to  the  anthropoids. 

After  making  a  comparison  of  all  the  minutest  details 
of  structure,  it  was  Professor  St.  George  Mivart  who  was 
compelled  to  admit  that:  "Viewed  from  the  anatomical 
standpoint,  man  is  but  one  species  of  the  order  Primates; 
and  he  even  differs  far  less  from  the  higher  apes  than  do 
these  latter  from  the  inferior  forms  of  the  order."  (Less. 
in  Elem.  Anat.,  p.  496.)  Further,  biological  research  has 
shown  that  all  of  the  various  groups  of  existing  men, 
from  the  very  lowest  racial  types  to  the  highest  and  best 
representatives,  are  quite  of  this  world  and  form  just  as 
much  a  part  of  its  history  as  any  other  factor  composing 
the  realm  of  nature.  There  is  no  valid  evidence  to  show 
that  his  stay  upon  the  earth  is  to  be  a  temporary  .one, 
and  a  great  deal  of  very  excellent  biological  evidence 
to  show  that  he  has  existed  here  for  a  great  many 
thousands  of  years.  And  as  to  all  the  rest  of  Nature' hav- 
ing been  especially  created  for  his  benefit  and  pleasure,  I 
can  only  say  tnat  it  is  hardly  necessary  for  me,  in  this 
day  and  generation,  to  adduce  the  simple  arguments  re- 
quired to  prove  the  absurdity  of  any  such  notion.  Every 
page  in  the  history  of  man,  since  the  day  he  first  was 
enabled  to  make  record  of  his  earthly  career,  reeks  with 
pain,  with  misery  and  with  unhappiness.  Man  has  had 
to  contend  with  the  elements  just  as  fiercely  as  other 
living  organisms  of  the  world;  he  has  had  to  contend  even 
far  more  strenuously  against  the  ravages  of  disease  and 
accident;  all  over  the  world  Nature  presents  the  majority 
of  mankind  with  objects  that  are  anything  but  pleas- 
urable for  his  beholding;  and,  finally,  for  I  will  not  multi- 
ply the  many  examples  that  could  easily  be  brought  for- 
ward, men  are  even  so  constituted  that  they  continually 
war  upon  each  other  and  by  so  doing  offer  thousands  of 


ON  BIOLOGY.  63 

spectacles  to  the  more  peaceful  side  of  society  that  can 
hardly  be  designated  as  pleasurable  or  beneficial  ones  in 
Nature's  drama. 

Yet,  in  face  of  all  this,  science  has  emphasized  what 
must  be  patent  to  any  thinking  mind,  and  that  is,  apart 
from  the  similarity  of  his  anatomical  structure  as  com- 
pared with  other  mammals  there  is  at  least  one  thing 
that  widely  separates  man  from  all  else  in  living  Nature. 
But  its  teachings  are  also  to  be  found  in  one  of  the  vol- 
umes devoted  to  biology,  viz.,  in  the  science  of  psychol- 
ogy. From  the  psychical  point  of  view  the  vast  abyss 
that  separates  man  from  all  the  rest  of  living  creation  is 
so  wide  and  so  profound  that  there  can  be  but  little  dan- 
ger in  overestimating  either  its  width  or  its  profundity. 
Speaking  of  this  aspect  of  the  question  it  has  been  said 
that:  "Man  must  be  set  off  not  only  against  the  animal 
kingdom  but  against  the  whole  of  Nature  besides,  are  an 
equivalent:  Nature  the  book — the  revelation— and  man 
the  interpreter." 

"So  in  the  history  of  the  earth;  from  one  point  of  view 
the  era  of  man  is  not  equivalent  to  an  era,  nor  to  an 
age,  not  to  a  period,  nor  even  to  an  epoch.  But  from  an- 
other point  of  view  it  is  the  equivalent  of  the  whole 
geological  history  of  the  earth  besides.  For  the  history 
of  the  earth  finds  its  consummation,  and  its  interpreter, 
and  its  significance  in  man."  (Leconte.) 

Not  to  weary  you,  I  should  like  to  adduce  another  es- 
ample  wherein  the  value  of  biological  study  has  been 
most  abundantly  proved  within  a  comparatively  short 
space  of  time.  It  is  perfectly  safe  to  say  that  within  the 
last  half  century  the  entire  theory  of  agriculture  has 
been  completely  revolutionized.  From  the  crudest  no- 
tions and  ideas,  as  they  were  put  into  practice  by  the 
tillers  of  the  soil  both  in  this  country  and  in  Europe 
during  the  early  part  of  the  present  century,  agri- 
culture has  grown  to  occupy  a  place  among  the  sciences. 
This  has  come  about  through  the  marvelous  advances 
made  incur  knowledge  of  physiological  botany;  in  the 
pathology  and  morphology  of  plants  generally,  and  the 
principles  applied  to  those  cultivated  by  the  agricultur- 
ist. To  the  vast  store  of  facts  that  have  been  discovered 
bearing  upon  general  entomology,  and  in  particular  to 
the  study  of  the  life  histories  of  that  enormous  host  of 
species  of  insects  which  are  either  beneficial  or  injurious 
to  garden  vegetables,  fruit  trees,  grains,  cultivated  shrubs 
and  the  like.  In  similar  directions  even  knowledge  of 
another  kind  is  coming  into  play,  and  our  own  Depart- 


64  LECTURES 

ment  of  Agriculture  here  is  vigorously  pursuing  a  line  of 
study  that  in  the  future  must  surely  have  its  use  for  the 
agriculturist.  This  is  nothing  less  than  the  pursuance 
of  a  systematic  investigation  of  the  contents  of  the  stom- 
achs of  all  our  species  of  United  States  birds  at  all  sea- 
sons of  the  year.  The  object  here  aimed  at  is  to  encour- 
age the  protection  and  presence  of  those  species  of  birds 
which  are  ascertained  to  destroy  those  insects  which  are 
known  agricultural  'pests;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  to 
either  drive  away  or  destroy  those  species  which  prove  by 
their  habits  or  food  to  be  injurious  in  any  way  to  the  suc- 
cess of  the  agriculturalist.  Such  a  field  of  research  has 
been  termed  a  Department  of  Economic  Ornithology,  and 
of  course  demands  a  scientific  and  practical  application 
of  the  facts  brought  to  light  by  the  biologist.  Agricul- 
ture is  usually  made  to  include  the  care,  breeding  and 
study  of  the  domesticated  animals;  and  the  recent  Im- 
provements and  successes  along  such  lines  are  entirely 
due  to  the  researches  of  the  biologists,  for  they  have 
come  about  through  a  fuller  knowledge  of  the  morphol- 
ogy of  animals,  the  physiology  of  animals,  of  the  dis- 
eases to  which  they  are  liable  and  the  nature  of  the  para- 
sites which  infest  them;  and  of  the  laws  pertaining  to 
artificial  selection  in  breeding,  and  kindred  matters. 

Once  more,  and  it  is  familiar  to  most  of  us,  the  excellent 
results  that  have  rewarded  the  efforts  of  our  National 
Fish  Commission.  Here  is  a  scientific  body  interested 
in  the  protection,  propagation  and  extension  of  our  food 
fishes,  oysters  and  the  like,  and  it  almost  goes  without 
the  saying  that  their  successes  depend  upon  the  proper 
application  of  the  knowledge  of  the  facts  discovered  by 
the  icthyologist  of  the  habits,  foods,  and  general  economy 
of  the  enormous  list  of  species  of  our  fresh  and  salt  water 
fishes.  And,  so  far  as  the  oyster  is  concerned,  certain 
biologists  have  well-nigh  devoted  their  life's  work  to  its 
complete  study,  and  the  practical  economist  has  not  been 
slow  in  seizing  upon  the  results  of  his  researches  and 
turning  them  to  practical  account. 

Finally,  it  may  in  truth  be  said  that  our  studies  in  the 
direction  of  the  structure  and  physiology  of  all  fprms  of 
plant  and  animal  life  cannot  be  in  any  way  too  ex- 
haustive, for  the  results  attained  are  sure,  sooner  or  later, 
to  come  powerfully  into  play  to  the  furtherance  of  the 
best  of  human  interests,  and  it  is  hard  to  say  more  than 
this.  To  the  same  end  our  material  progress  is  furthered 
in  certain  fields,  in  proportion  as  we  come  in  possession  of 
a  full  knowledge  of  the  geographical  distribution,  the 


ON  BIOLOGY.  65 

habits,  the  various  foods  and  the  life-histories  of  all 
animals,  all  living  organisms,  whatsoever,  as  well  as 
everything  possible  to  be  known  of  plant  Mfeboth  in  space 
and  in  time.  Everything  is  to  be  gained  by  a  vigorous 
pushing  of  the  study  of  both  normal  and  pathological 
histology  in  every  possible  direction,  by  which  we  mean 
an  attainment  of  a  knowledge  of  the  intimate  structure 
of  the  tissues  in  every  living  organism,  both  animal  and 
vegetable,  and  the  various  diseases  which  may  affect  the 
same. 

Did  my  time  but  admit  of  it  it.  would,  in  a  similar 
manner,  not  be  difficult  for  me  to  show  that  the  most 
valuable  and  practical  results  are  sure  to  follow  in  the 
wake  of  our  increased  knowledge  of  such  other  biological 
sciences  as  palaeontology,  aetiology,  sociology  and 
psychology. 

Many  have  been  the  triumphs  of  biology  in  the  past, 
and  in  many  departments  of  science  and  learning;  bul, 
as  great  as  those  have  been,  I  am  constrained  to  believe 
that  still  greater  ones  are  to  be  met  and  dealt  with  in  the 
future.  Many  of  the  grander  conquests  I  have  already 
referred  to  or  in  some  degree  explained.  These  are 
mainly  the  elucidation  and  establishment  of  an  infinite 
number  of  facts  forming  a  basis  upon  which  is  safely 
reared  the  doctrine  of  the  theory  of  descent  of  all  animal 
and  plant  forms,  both  in  space  and  in  time.  Second,  the 
revealing  of  the  fact  that  a  uniform  and  fundamental 
plan  of  structure  pervades  all  Nature,  and  as  depending 
thereon  we  find  that  the  same  holds  true  with  regard  to 
function.  Thirdly,  that  the  present  distribution  of  ani- 
mal and  plant  forms  over  all  parts  of  the  earth  are  most 
perfectly  explained  by  the  far-reaching  researches  that 
biology  has  accomplished  in  palaeontology.  Lastly,  the 
invaluable  results  that  have  rewarded  biological  investi- 
gators in  the  fields  of  comparative  psychology  and 
sociology. 

These  having  been  some  of  the  major  achievements  of 
the  science,  I  desir  ,  for  the  purpose  I  have  in  view,  to 
simply  recall  to  your  memories  some  of  the  more  inter- 
esting facts  that  biology  has  brought  to  light,  as  inci- 
dental to  the  main  laws  just  enumerated.  They  all  most 
powerfully  tend  to  establish  the  value  of  biological 
research,  both  as  a  study  from  a  purely  utilitarian  point 
of  view,  and  as  a  most  efficient  adjunct  to  the  proper 
training  of  the  human  intellect. 

For  a  long  time  morphologists,  in  their  dissections  of 
all  manner  of  plants  and  animals,  met  with  structures 


66  LECTURES 

which  came  to  be  called  "rudimentary  organs,"  but 
more  properly  known  now  as  "vestigial  structures"  or 
organs.  As  examples  of  these  we  may  cite  the  teeth  in 
the  upper  jaw  in  the  embryos  of  many  of  the  ruminat- 
ing animals — as  in  the  case  of  the  embryos  of  our  com- 
mon cattle.  These  teeth  never  fully  develop,  are  func- 
tionless  and  of  absolutely  no  importance  to  the  animal. 
Teeth  also  occur  in  the  jaws  of  young  whales  that  have  a 
similar  history,  for  as  we  know  iu  the  adult  whale  the 
jaws  only  support  the  baleen  or  whalebone,  and  the  total 
teeth  in  them  entirely  disappear,  never  having  had  any 
physiological  importance. 

Quite  a  long  list  of  similar  vestigial  structures  occur 
in  every  man,  woman  and  child  among  us,  and  it  was 
utterly  impossible  to  make  out  the  purpose  of  their  being 
there  until  biology  stepped  in  to  render  the  proper  ex- 
planation. Among  birds  we  find,  in  one  species  or  an- 
other, rudimentary  wings  incapable  of  being  used  in 
flight,  and  in  most  all  ordinary  birds  a  vestigial  chumb 
in  the  hand.  Snakes  have  a  rudimentary  lung,  and 
rudimentary  mammw  occur  among  the  males  of  the 
mammalia.  In  some  lizards  the  vestigial  limbs  and  the 
skeletal  arches  that  support  them  are  entirely  concealed 
from  superficial  view  by  the  skin  covering  the  body; 
this  is  also  the  case  with  the  hind  limbs  in  a  whale. 
Plants  everywhere  offer  us  hundreds  of  like  examples. 
Plenty  of  cases  of  rudimentary  and  sightless  eyes  occur 
in  various  species,  which  now  pass  their  existence  under- 
ground. But  the  name  of  these  structures  is  legion,  and 
scarcely  a  living  organism  exists  that  offers  us  not  one  or 
more  examples,  so  it  is  quite  out  of  the  question  to  give 
the  list,  in  extenso,  of  them  here,  and  as  for  that  in- 
stances enough  have  already  been  cited. 

Of  these  vestigial  organs,  Mr.  Darwin  has  said  that: 
"By  whatever  steps  they  may  have  been  degraded  into 
their  present  useless  condition  are  the  record  of  a  former 
state  of  things,  and  have  been  retained  solely  through 
the  power  of  inheritance.  We  can  understand,  on  the 
genealogical  view  of  classification,  how  it  is  that  system- 
atists,  in  placing  organisms  in  their  proper  places  in  the 
natural  system,  have  often  found  rudimentary  parts  as 
useful  as  or  even  sometimes  more  useful  than  parts  of 
higii  physiological  importance.  Rudimentary  organs 
may  be  compared  with  the  letters  in  a  word,  still  retained 
in  the  spelling  but  become  useless  in  the  pronunciation, 
but  which  serve  as  a  clew  for  its  derivation.  On  the  view 
of  descent  with  modification,  we  may  conclude  that  the 


ON  BIOLOGY.  67 

existence  of  organs  in  a  rudimentary,  imperfect  and  use- 
less condition,  or  quite  aborted,  far  from  presenting  a 
strange  difficulty,  as  they  assuredly  do  on  the  old  doc- 
trine of  creation,  might  even  have  been  anticipated  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  views  here  explained."  (Origin  of 
Species,  p.  402.) 

Another  magnificent  array  of  interesting  and  most  im- 
portant facts  have  been  brought  to  light  in  the  course  of 
the  innumerable  researches  that  have  led  to  the  discovery 
that  all  our  domesticated  animals,  as  pigeons,  the  various 
tame  fowls,  cattle,  dogs,  horses  and  cats  have  all  been  de- 
rived from  wild  types,  each  within  the  group  to  which  it 
severally  belongs.  Darwin  proved,  after  years  of  patient 
and  most  scientifically  conducted  experiments  upon  the 
very  richest  kind  of  material  obtainable  in  all  the  world, 
that  all  the  vast  list  of  varieties  of  domesticated  pigeons 
were  derived  from  a  single  wild  species — or  from  the 
common  blue  rock-pigeon,  Columba  lima,  the  primary 
stock.  In  a  similar  manner  have  all  the  remarkable 
forms  of  domesticated  rabbits  been  traced  back  to  the 
common  wild  rabbit,  which  has  proved  to  be  the  original 
primary  species  from  which  they  were  all  undoubtedly 
derived.  Many  of  the  domesticated  species  of  rabbits  are 
now  so  utterly  different,  both  in  internal  structure  and 
external  form,  that  they  are  more  widely  separated, 
morphologically,  from  the  common  wild  type  than  the 
latter  is  from  any  other  wild  species  in  any  part  of  the 
world. 

Illustrating  this  point  in  another  way,  a  distinguished 
German  naturalist  says:  "In  the  year  1419,  a  few  rabbits, 
born  on  board  ship  of  a  tame  Spanish  rabbit,  were  put  on 
the  island  of  Porto  Santo,  near  Madeira.  These  little 
animals,  there  being  no  beasts  of  prey,  in  a  short  time 
increased  so  enormously  that  they  became  a  pest  to  the 
country,  and  even  compelled  a  colony  to  remove  from 
the  island.  They  still  inhabit  the  island  in  great  num- 
bers; but  in  .the  course  of  four  hundred  and  fifty  years 
they  have  developed  into  a  quite  peculiar  variety — or,  if 
you  will  have  it,  into  a  "good  species"— which  is  dis- 
tinguished by  a  peculiar  color,  a  rat-like  shape,  small 
size,  nocturnal  life,  and  extraordinary  wildness." 
(Haeckel.)  It  is  most  important  to  note  now,  however, 
that  this  new  species  (L.  huxleyi)  will  not  cross  with  speci- 
mens of  the  original  European  domesticated  stock,  and 
.n  one  or  two  instances  where  they  have  they  are  infertile, 
thus  proving  that  they  are  thoroughly  differentiated  as  a 
species. 


68  LECTURES 

When  in  the  West,  a  number  of  years  ago,  and  often 
in  the  camps  of  our  Sioux  Indians,  I  found  it  in  many 
instances  difficult  to  distinguish  their  dogs  from  the  wild 
prairie  wolf  or  coyote  from  which  undoubtedly  all  were 
derived  originally.  In  some  cases,  however,  the  better 
differentiated  species  were  quite  distinct  and  very  dif- 
ferent appearing  animals.  The  parent  stock  of  all  our 
remarkable  breeds  of  chickens  is  beyond  all  doubt  the 
ordinary  wild  chicken  of  India,  the  Gallus  bankiva  of 
ornithologists;  and,  personally,  1  satisfied  myself  of  this 
fact,  not  long  ago,  by  a  most  careful  comparison  of  the 
entire  structure  of  alcoholic  specimens  of  the  India 
species  sent  me  from  India  for  the  very  purpose,  with 
numerous  species  of  our  common  fowls,  comparing  the 
skeletons  and  structure  for  structure  throughout.  Among 
the  domesticated  species  the  game  fowls  come  nearest  the 
original  wild  parent  stock,  and  yet,  in  appearance,  what 
a  wide  gap  exists  between  them,  for  instance,  and  the 
extraordinary  Polish  cocks.  In  comparing  our  common 
tame  turkey,  anatomically,  with  a  fine  series  of  the 
wild  turkeys  which  I  had  collected  for  the  purpose,  I  not 
only  satisfied  myself  that  our  domesticated  form  was 
derived  from  the  wild  one,  but  I  succeeded  in  obtaining 
a  series  of  skeletons  «which  showed  all  the  striking  dif- 
ferences in  beautiful  serial  arrangement,  standing  as  they 
did  between  the  two  extremes. 

I  might  go  on  citing  such  cases  by  the  hour,  and  multi- 
ply the  examples  in  an  endless  variety,  but  enough  has 
been  presented  to  show  what  biology  is  bringing  out 
along  the  lines  given.  The  literature  in  such  fields  is 
now  simply  enormous,  and  the  study  of  the  entire  ques- 
tion of  hybrids,  artificial  selection,  interbreeding, 
sterility,  and  the  production  of  new  species  and  sub- 
species, is  not  only  fraught  with  great  value  but  it  has 
had  the  effect  of  being  of  the  most  incalculable  benefit  to 
the  breeder  of  domestic  stock  of  all  kinds,  as  well  as 
throwing  a  powerful  light  upon  the  entire  question  of  the 
doctrine  of  descent  and  the  origin  of  species  as  we  find 
them  in  Nature.  Why,  when  Darwin  wrote  his  two 
volumes,  on  "Animals  and  Plants  under  Domestication," 
they  were  used  more  by  the  scientific  agriculturists  and 
breeders  the  world  over,  for  the  practical  and  useful  in- 
formation they  contained,  than  they  were  by  the  op- 
ponents of  the  theory  of  descent  to  study  the  arguments 
set  forth  in  them,  in  their  endeavors  to  defeat  the  same 
— and  this  is  saying  a  great  deal. 

There  are  several  other  very  beautiful  laws  presented 


ON  BIOLOGY.  69 

on  the  part  of  Nature,  the  operations  of  which  are  still 
but  imperfectly  known  to  the  biologist,  and  to  these  we 
can  but  barely  allude.  There  are  the  several  phases  of 
the  general  law  of  correlations,  as  exemplified  in  many 
ways  both  on  the  part  of  animals  and  of  plants;  of  the 
laws  of  the  relations  existing  between  organisms,  on  the 
one  hand,  and  all  that  goes  to  the  make-up  climate  on  the 
other;  of  the  laws  of  protective  resemblances  among 
animals  and  plants;  of  parthenogenesis  and  other  peculiar 
forms  of  reproduction;  of  the  laws  of  variation,  and  the 
effects  of  use  and  disuse  of  organs;  of  the  laws  of  the  ex- 
tinction of  species,  and  of  persistent  types  of  animals;  and 
some  few  others  which  show  those  delicate  compensations, 
equilibriums  and  balancings  that  are  ever  in  operation 
throughout  all  Nature  and  of  which  we  yet  ha,ve  so  very 
imperfect  a  knowledge.  Still,  to  some  extent,  we  have 
been  enabled  to  arrange  and  classify  those  laws,  and  these 
classifications  will  become  more  perfecc  as  the  examples 
they  present  become  better  understood.  Upon  every 
hand,  however,  cause  and  effect  are  seen  to  be  un- 
ceasingly in  action,  and  ever  with  an  absolutely  unvary- 
ing exactitude  whatever  may  be  the  nature  or  class  of 
cases  wherein  it  is  seen.  The  balancements  are  sustained 
everywhere  with  a  precision  admitting  of  no  variation 
whatever;  all  cells  moving  in  harmony  at  all  instants  of 
time,  and  in  obedience  to  uncompromising  laws.  No  field 
could  be  more  inviting  to  the  biologist  for  his  investi- 
gations and  his  meditations,  as  a  few  examples  which  I 
select  from  various  biological  authorities  will  go  far 
toward  showing. 

A  number  of  years  ago  I  had  under  my  observation  a 
man  that  possessed  six  fingers  upon  either  hand,  and  he 
had  several  sisters  and  a  brother  exhibiting  the  same 
monstrosity.  In  some  of  the  cases,  however,  but  one 
hand  showed  it;  and  a  brother  in  the  family  had  normal 
hands.  Only  one  of  this  man's  parents,  his  father,  I 
think,  showed  the  condition,  and  in  all  the  number  of 
toes  on  the  feet  were  normal.  In  such 
cases  the  numeral  relation  of  the  toes  and 
fingers  vary,  but  if  a  six-fingered  and  six-toed  man  should 
marry  a  woman  exhibiting  the  same  digital  characters, 
and  propagation  were  to  be  kept  up  for  generations  by 
puropinbreeding  the  character  would  become  perma- 
nently established  and  result  in  a  special  race  of  such  peo- 
ple. Haeckel  says:  "In  a  Spanish  family,  each  child  ex- 
cept the  youngest  had  the  number  six  on  both  hands  and 
feet;  the  youngest,  only,  had  the  usual  number  on  both 


70  LECTURES 

hands  and  feet,  and  the  six-fingered  father  of  the  child 
refused  to  recognize  the  last  one  as  his  own."  I  must  let 
an  example  of  this  kind  stand  as  a  representation  of  the 
thousand  and  one  other  characters  that  are  inherited  by 
children  from  their  ancestors  in  every  part  of  the  world. 
Indeed,  this  matter  of  inheritance  in  so  very  common, 
both  in  the  case  of  normal  characters  as  well  as  abnormal 
ones  or  even  in  diseases  or  the  predisposition  to  the  same, 
also  habits  and  traits,  that  they  are  scarcely  noticed  in 
our  everyday  life.  All  animals  and  plants  exhibit  the 
same  tendency,  and  instead  of  it  being  a  matter  of  light 
import  the  entire  law  is  one  of  the  very  greatest  biologi- 
cal importance,  and  has  been  dealt  with  under  the  gen- 
eral law  of  heredity  and  inheritance;  the  first  having 
reference  to  the  power  of  transmission  and  the  latter  to 
actual  transmission.  These  when  taken  in  connection 
with  the  now  well-proved  fact  of  the  mutability  af 
organisms,  it  at  once  becomes  apparent  to  any  one  of  us 
how  important  it  is  to  well  examine  and  study  the  re- 
sulting phenomena.  This  applies  especially  to  the 
biologist,  and  to  the  scientific  and  thoughtful  physician. 
Connected  with  this  law  we  have  to  deal  with  another, 
or  the  one  referring  to  the  question  of  the  alternation  of 
generations,  where  inherited  characters  are  known  to  skip 
one  or  more  generations;  and  this  law,  pushed  to  the  ex- 
treme, explains  the  matter  of  reversion  or  atavism.  An 
excellent  illustrative  example  of  the  last  are  those  cases 
wherein  we  sometimes  see  a  horse  born  with  series  of  dis- 
tinct stripes  of  black  arranged  in  a  definite  way  on  the 
body  and  limbs.  No  such  character  ever  occurred  in  its 
ancesters  so  far  as  they  can  be  traced  back,  and  the  con- 
dition can  alone  be  explained  by  atavism,  or  in  other 
words  the  original  stock  of  all  of  the  horses  from  which 
such  an  individual  is  descended  was  a  striped  animal  or 
a  striped  race  or  family,  something  like  the  now  wild 
zebras,  quaggas,  etc.— existing  horse-like  animals  in  Na- 
ture. In  ages  to  come  such  cases  of  atavism  will  un- 
doubtedly, and  not  unfrequently,  arise  through  inter- 
marriage of  the  hybrid  descendants  among  us  of 
Ethiopian  and  Caucasian  stock.  One  has  but  to  study  in 
this  city  the  very  numerous  and  extremely  light-colored 
hybrids  of  Afro-Caucasian  species  which  are  now  annu- 
ally making  their  appearance  to  understand  this.  In  fact, 
I  have  collected  one  good  example  of  this  for  use  in  my 
anthropological  studies.  A  man  of  undoubted  Saxon  des- 
cent married  a  woman  as  white  as  himself,  and  whose 
ancestors  had  been  white  for  a  generation  or  two  before 


ON  BIOLOGY. 

her,  very  likely  for  a  longer  time.  Their  first  child  was 
as  black  as  the  veriest  Congo  that  ever  was  born.  When 
we  come  to  consider  that  hybridization  between  the  two 
races  has  been  going  on  since  the  earliest  days  of  slavery 
in  this  country,  and  bringing  our  knowledge  of  the  laws 
of  inheritance  to  our  aid,  especially  the  atavistic  phase 
of  them,  such  a  case  needs  no  particular  explanation  at 
the  present  time. 

Still  another  law,  or  the  law  of  sexual  transmission, 
offers  many  curious  cases;  that  is  where  one  of  the  sexes 
suddenly  exhibits  a  character  or  characters  which 
normally  only  belong  to  the  opposite  one.  Under  this  we 
find  those  peculiar  examples  of  women  having  full  beards 
and  mustachios;  does  among  deer,  with  fully  developed 
antlers;  hens  wearing  the  spurs  of  the  cock;  and  hun- 
dreds of  other  most  remarkable  cases  to  which  I  forbear 
to  allude  at  the  present  time.  They  are  phenomena  of 
great  importance  to  the  biologist  in  his  studies  of  the 
operation  of  natural  laws. 

Even  the  question  of  hybridism  has  a  literature  and  a 
broad  field  of  study  of  its  own  to-day.  Examples  of  this 
are  common  all  over  the  world  and  in  many  quarters  are 
receiving  the  most  exact  investigation  possible,  which  its 
high  importance  so  fully  deserves. 

Some  half  a  dozen  other  laws  have  been  carefully  dif- 
ferentiated and  elucidated  by  the  biologists,  and  an  end- 
less series  of  examples  occur  upon  all  hands  in  Nature  to 
fully  illustrate  them.  The  whole  question  of  adaptation 
also  presents  us  with  its  numerous  well-defined  laws,  and 
their  exemplification  in  the  animal  and  vegetable  worlds. 
Their  comprehension  is  absolutely  essential  to  the  student 
who  would  understand  the  operations  daily  being  enacted 
in  the  natural  world  about  him,  on  every  hand,  by  every 
form  of  living  organism. 

For  the  present,  however,  we  cannot  enter  further  into 
these  fields,  and  at  the  most  I  feel  I  have  brought  ample 
evidence  before  you  wherewith  to  prove  the  undoubted 
value  that  attaches  to  the  study  of  the  biological  sciences. 

This  being  so,  the  very  practical  question  next  arises, 
or  questions  I  may  say,  of,  first,  to  whom  should  biology 
be  taught;  when  and  where  should  that  instruction  be 
given;  and  what  are  the  best  methods  for  imparting  the 
necessary  knowledge  of  the  science.  To  these  several  in- 
quiries I  would  answer  that  I  would  make  its  main 
principles  and  laws,  its  essential  truths,  a  prerequisite  to 
the  examination  of  every  accepted  teacher  for  a  public 
school  throughout  the  United  States,  in  order  that  it 


72  LECTURES 

might  be  properly  taught  in  all  our  public  schools; 
similarly  it  should  be  entered  into  the  scheme  of  edu- 
cation of  every  private  school,  college  and  university 
throughout  the  land;  a  very  complete  course  in  biology 
most  assuredly  should  form  a  part  of  the  curriculum  of 
every  authorized  medical  college  in  America;  and  finally, 
it  should  reach  the  people  through  public  lectures,  public 
museums,  zoological  gardens,  and  public  libraries  and 
laboratories. 

At  the  outstart,  it  may  be  said,  in  general  terms,  that 
the  means  to  be  employed  in  teaching  biology 
consist  in  the  handling  and  proper  examina- 
tion of  biological  material.  To  this  end  we  employ 
dissections  of  existing  organisms;  histological  researches 
with  the  microscopes  and  other  instruments  of  precision; 
next,  the  making  of  drawings  and  sketches  of  the  objects 
we  have  observed  and  studied;  then,  physiological 
studies,  wherein  will  come  vivisections,  various  con- 
trivances to  exhibit  the  fundamental  principles  of  the 
science;  and  the  application  of  the  abiological  sciences  of 
chemistry  and  physics.  We  employ  all  manner  of  illus- 
trative specimens;  as  biological  material  in  alcohol, 
models  of  all  descriptions,  the  skins  of  animals  preserved 
in  the  various  ways,  diagrams  of  all  kinds — both  of 
natural  size  and  enlarged — colored  or  uncolorea,  also 
palseontological  material,  together  with  full  series  of 
geological  and  physical  charts  exhibiting  the  distribution 
of  plants  and  animals  both  in  space  and  in  time.  The 
literature  of  biology  is  to  be  freely  used,  and  a  very  im- 
portant part  of  the  instruction  depends  upon  lectures, 
the  museums,  collections  of  animals  and  plants,  and  the 
zoological  gardens. 

As  to  the  general  methods  to  be  adopted  in  biological 
study,  Mr.  Huxley  presents  us  with  some  excellent  advice 
when  he  says:  "Since  biology  is  a  physical  science,  the 
methods  of  studying  it  must  needs  be  analogous  to  that 
which  is  followed  in  the  other  physical  sciences.  It  has 
now  long  been  recognized  that,  if  a  man  wishes  to  be  a 
chemist  it  is  not  only  necessary  that  he  should  read 
chemical  books  and  attend  chemical  lectures,  but  that 
he  should  actually  perform  the  fundamental  experiments 
in  the  laboratory  for  himse.f,  and  thus  learn  exactly  what 
the  words  which  he  finds  in  his  books  and  hears  from  his 
teachers  mean." 

"If  he  does  not  do  so,  he  may  read  till  the  crack  of 
doom,  but  he  will  never  know  much  about  chemistry. 
That  is  what  every  chemist  will  tell  you,  and  the  physi- 


ON  BIOLOGY.  73 

cist  will  do  the  same  for  his  branch  of  science.  The  great 
changes  and  improvements  in  physical  and  chemical 
scientific  education  which  have  taken  place  of  late  have 
all  resulted  from  the  combination  of  practical  teaching 
with  the  reading  of  books  and  with  the  hearing  of  lec- 
tures. The  same  thing  is  true  in  biology.  Nobody  will 
ever  know  anything  about  biology  except  in  a  dilettante 
'paper-philosopher'  way,  who  contents  himself  with  read- 
ing books  on  botany,  zoology  and  the  like;  and  the  reason 
of'this  is  simple  and  easy  to  understand.  It  is  that  all 
language  is  merely  symbolical  of  the  things  of  which  it 
treats;  the  more  complicated  the  things,  the  more  bare  is 
the  symbol  and  the  more  its  verbal  definition  requires  to 
be  supplemented  by  the  information  derived  directly 
from  the  handling,  and  the  seeing  and  the  touching  of 
the  thing  symbolized;  that  is  really  what  is  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  whole  matter.  It  is  plain  common  sense,  as 
all  truth,  in  the  long  run,  is  only  common  sense  clarified. 
If  you  want  a  man  to  be  a  tea  merchant,  you  don't  tell 
him  to  read  books  about  China  or  about  tea,  but  you  put 
him  into  a  tea  merchant's  office  where 
he  has  the  handling,  the  smelling  and  the 
tasting  of  teas.  Without  the  sort  of  knowledge 
which  can  be  gained  only  in  this  practical  way  his  ex- 
ploits as  a  tea  merchant  will  soon  come  to  a  bankrupt 
termination.  The  'paper-philosophers'  are  under  the 
delusion  that  physical  science  can  be  mastered  as  literary 
accomplishments  are  acquired,  but  unfortunately  it  is 
not  so.  You  may  read  any  quantity  of  books,  and  you  may 
be  almost  as  ignorant  as. you  were  at  starting  if  you  don't 
have,  at  the  back  of  your  minds,  the  change  for  words  in 
definite  images  which  can  only  be  acquired  through  the 
operation  of  your  observing  faculties  on  the  phenomena 
of  Nature." 

The  preliminary  methods  of  procedure  in  biological 
study  here  pointed  out  by  Professor  Huxley  were  given 
to  a  New  York  audience  by  him  as  long  ago  as  1876,  but 
those  methods  have  been  true  for  all  time  and  are  es- 
pecially applicable  in  these  days.  Indeed  researches  con- 
ducted in  precisely  the  manner  pointed  out  by  the  most 
distinguished  expounder  of  biological  science  we  have 
living,  the  author  whom  I  have  just  quoted,  have  come 
to  be  spoken  of  by  everyone  who  has  the  progress  of 
human  learning  at  heart  as  the  "scientific  method."  Now 
to  me,  the  modern  "scientific  method"  in  any  kind  of 
investigation  or  research  means  nothing  more  than,  first, 
having  one  thoroughly  acquaint  himself  with  all  of 


74  LECTURES 

importance  that  has  previously  been  written  upon  the 
subject,  or  matter,  or  organism  he  proposes  to  examine; 
next,  to  make  that  examination  as  carefully  as  possible, 
and  as  thoroughly  comparative  as  his  material  will  ad- 
mit, bringing  to  his  aid  the  various  modern  instruments 
of  precision  used  by  biologists  or  other  scientists  in  their 
own  departments,  and,  finally,  also  summoning  to  his 
assistance  a  clear  knowledge  of  those  natural  laws  as  they 
are  at  present  understood  and  have  bearing  upon  the 
question  in  hand.  To  complete  any  such  investigation 
it  should  be  printed,  free  from  error,  and  in  some  medium 
where  it  will  become  easily  available  for  the  students  of 
the  future,  and  show  upon  every  page,  plate,  and  figure 
of  the  record  that  its  author  had  carried  out  in  detail 
every  suggestion  that  I  have  just  presented;  that  he  has 
properly  accredited  former  workers  in  the  same  fields 
with  such  facts  as  their  prior  labors  revealed;  that  he  is 
candid,  clear,  thorough,  logical,  and  guided  by  the  desire 
to  discover  only  the  truth  in  every  detail  to  which  he  has 
directed  his  mind  during  the  task  he  has  set  himself  to 
perform. 

It  goes  without  the  saying  that  the  principal  field  de- 
manding the  attention  of  the  biologist  is  that  one  which 
takes  Into  consideration  the  life-histories,  morphology, 
and  physiology  of  all  living  animal  organisms  and  plants. 
Such  studies  are  chiefly  made  in  the  biological  laboratories, 
the  museums,  and  the  zoological  gardens,  the  former 
always  being  properly  fitted  up  with  the  proper  ap- 
pliances and  text-books  for  that  kind  of  research. 

Remembering  now  what  has  been  said  on  the  question 
of  the  fundamental  uniformity  of  structure,  as  exempli- 
fied in  the  animal  and  vegetable  kingdoms,  it  will  at 
once  be  appreciated  that  it  obviates  the  necessity  of  the 
student  in  zoology  studying  separately  each  and  all  the 
entire  series  of  species  representing  the  existing  world's 
fauna  on  the  one  hand,  and  her  flora  on  the  other.  We 
can  easily  see  how  impossible  such  a  task  would  be  of  ac- 
complishment, inasmuch  as  there  are  considerably  over 
100,000  insects  alone,  and  the  species  of  plants  in  the 
world  is  simply  enormous.  Fortunately,  and  taking  in- 
sects for  example,  which  we  have  just  mentioned,  we 
have  such  things  as  what  may  be  regarded  as  more  or 
less  type-forms  in  all  the  great  groups  of  animals  and 
plants,  and  by  making  a  proper  selection  of  one  of  these 
among  the  insects,  and  mastering  all  that  can  be  known 
of  its  life-history,  structure,  and  so  forth,  it  is  quite 
possible  to  gain  a  very  fair  conception  of  the  correspond- 


ON  BIOLOGY.  75 

ing  facts  as  they  are  presented  on  the  part  of  the  vast 
majority  of  insects.  With  a  definite  knowledge  of  that 
much  at  his  command,  and  especially  a  comprehension 
of  the  nomenclature  used  in  the  description  of  the  various 
structural  parts,  the  student  will  find  that  the  transition 
to  the  study  of  those  modifications  in  the  anatomy  of 
other  insect  forms  is  natural  and  not  difficult,  so  that  by 
the  study  of  a  comparatively  few  more  well-chosen  speci- 
mens he  soon  acquires  a  wide  understanding  of  the  whole, 
and  is  capable  of  comprehending  the  most  of  what  he 
reads  in  his  text-books  on  the  subject. 

In  a  similar  manner  one  may  master  the  Jfe-histories, 
the  morphology  and  physiology  of  a  number  of  well- 
selected  specimens  or  types  of  the  lower  and  higher 
forms  of  plant  life,  when  it  is  soon  ascertained  that  he 
has  at  his  command  the  knowledge  which  permits  him 
to  comprehend  more  or  less  of  the  history,  origin,  devel- 
opment and  growth  of  the  entire  vegetable  kingdom. 
Thereafter,  special  modifications  presented  on  the  part 
of  peculiar  forms  of  plant-life  are  easily  understood  with 
scarcely  any  additional  labor.  Types  of  the  vnrious 
groups  of  the  invertebrate*  should  be  examined  and  com- 
pared in  a  like  method,  all  the  way  from  an  amoeba  up  to 
a  erood  typical  beetle. 

Passing  next  to  the  vertebrates,  good  representatives  of 
all  the  main  groups  shouM  be  examined  in  the  same 
way;  the  various  structures  thoroughly  intercompared; 
studied  by  means  of  diagrams;  and  accounts  of  their 
anatomy  reviewed  in  the  best  text-books  on  the  subject, 
Useful  types  for  this  purpose  are  seen  in  the  well-known 
lancelet;  in  a  typical  shark  or  ray;  any  teleosteon  fish; 
the  frog;  a  turtle;  any  ordinary  bird  form,  as  the  common 
fowl;  and,  finally,  some  type  mammal,  which  may  be 
met  by  either  the  common  cat  or  the  rabbit.  This  is  the 
plan  adopted  by  the  best  biological  laboratories  both  in 
this  country  and  abroad,  and  of  its  aims  a  prominent 
instructor  has  said:  "The  purpose  of  this  course  is  not 
to  make  skilled  dissectors,  but  to  give  every  student  a 
clear  and  definite  conception,  by  means  of  sense-images, 
of  the  characteristic  structure  of  each  of  the  leading 
modifications  of  the  animal  kingdom;  and  that  is  per- 
fectly possible,  by  going  no  farther  than  the  length  of 
the  list  of  forms  which  I  have  enumerated.  If  a  man 
knows  the  structure  of  the  animals  I  have  mentioned  he 
has  a  clear  and  exact,  however  limited,  apprehension  of 
the  essential  features  of  the  organization  of  all  those 
great  divisions  of  the  animal  and  vegetable  kingdoms  to 


76  LECTURES 

which  the  forms  I  have  mentioned  severally  belong. 
And  it  then  becomes  possible  for  him  to  read  with  profit; 
because  every  time  he  meets  with  the  name  of  a  struc- 
ture he  has  a  definite  image  in  his  mind  of  what  the 
name  means  in  the  particular  creature  he  is  reading 
about,  and,  therefore,  the  reading  is  not  mere  reading. 
It  is  not  mere  repetition  of  words;  but  every  term  em- 
ployed in  the  description,  we  will  say,  of  a  horse,  or  of 
an  elephant,  will  call  up  the  image  of  the  things  he  had 
seen  in  the  rabbit,  and  ne  is  able  to  form  a  distinct  con- 
ception of  that  which  he  has  not  seen,  as  a  modification 
of  that  which  he  has  seen."  (Huxley.) 

So  far  as  I  have  examined  the  course  in  elementary  bi- 
ology as  given  here  in  our  public  schools,  it  seems  to  me 
to  be  a  worse  than  useless  one,  inasmuch  as  it,  by  the  use 
of  a  text-book  alone,  puts  into  the  heads  of  the  juvenile 
scholars  some  very  erroneous  ideas  upon  but  one  branch 
of  biology,  that  is,  physiology.  The  sole  aim  would  seem 
to  be  to  impress  upon  the  minds  of  the  pupils  that  the 
principal  value  of  the  study  of  physiology  is  to  warn  them 
against  the  evil  results  of  the  use  of  tobacco  and  alcoholic 
stimulants.  There  is  no  reason  to  believe  to  the  contrary 
but  what  such  misguided,  fanatical  reformers  would  also 
introduce  into  the  public  schools  some  elementary  text- 
book in  anatomy,  having  as  its  chief  aim  to  paiat  some 
lurid  picture  of  the  violence  done  certain  structures  in 
the  matter  of  hanging  and  the  pain  attached  to  that 
operation,  in  order  to  warn  them  against  the  penalties 
that  might  follow  willful  murder. 

Such  pernicious  instruction  as  this  should  be  super- 
seded at  as  early  a  day  as  possible  by  a  thorough,  sound 
and  practical  course  in  elementary  biology,  adapted  to 
school  children,  to  the  ages  from  eight  to  fifteen;  and  it  is 
truly  remarkable  the  interest  children  exhibit  in  such 
matters  when  interestingly  and  rationally  taught  them. 
Between  the  ages  just  mentioned  there  is  no  reason  why 
they  should  not  gain  some  idea  of  the  distribution  of  the 
animals  and  plants  of  their  own  country,  at  least,  taken 
in  connection  with  their  elementary  lessons  in  physical 
geography.  By  the  use  of  a  good  text-book,  by  colored 
diagrams,  by  models  and  certain  material  that  can  be 
obtained  at  any  butcher's  stall,  they  can  easily  be  taught 
the  structure  and  physiology  of  the  principal  organs,  tis- 
sues and  parts  of  the  human  body;  and,  finally,  there 
may  with  great  advantage  be  employed  elementary  in- 
struction in  botany  by  dissections  upon  specimens  of 
properly  selected  plants.  Farther  than  this  it  is  not  de- 


ON  BIOLOGY.  77 

sirable  to  go.  After  fifteen  years  of  age  our  youth  can 
readily  grasp  the  advantages  that  are  sure  to  flow  from 
a  laboratory  course,  as  I  explained  it  a  few  moments  ago. 
Under  a  good  instructor  they  can  be  easily  taught  in  a 
few  lessons  all  the  essentials  of  dissecting,  and  the  use 
of  a  school  microscope  and  the  other  necessary  instru- 
ments to  commence  their  work;  and  it  is  truly  a  pleasure 
to  find  how  often  we  meet  with  children  at  this  age  who 
thoroughly  enjoy  and  appreciate  such  a  course  of  train- 
ing. 

Of  course  it  will  not  be  necessary  here  to  say  anything 
in  reference  to  the  value  of  the  study  of  biology  to  the 
students  of  the  subject  per  se;  or  in  other  words  to 
those  of  either  sex  who  have  it  in  mind  to  follow  the 
science  as  a  calling  in  life.  To  them  it  will  be  their 
career,  their  profession,  and  that  simply  demands  a 
thorough  academic  course,  or  one  in  a  university,  and, 
later,  or  partly  taken  in  connection  therewith,  a  general 
course  in  biology  taught  upon  the  most  modern  and  im- 
proved plan.  Subsequently  the  energies  of  the  student 
will  be  bent  along  the  lines  of  the  special  department  of 
the  science  which  he  is  best  fitted  in  all  ways  to  pursue. 
In  these  days,  so  broad  is  the  field,  that  no  one  ever 
dreams  of  doing  more  than  devoting  his  attention  to  some 
very  limited  part  of  biology,  and  indeed,  of  necessity  all 
of  our  best  biologists  are  specialists.  So  narrow  are  some 
of  the  paths,  that  men  are  content  to  confine  themselves 
to  even  the  study  of  restricted  groups  of  some  one  class 
of  the  main  divisions.  For  instance,  the  years  of  the  life 
of  some  biologist  may  have  been  entirely  devoted  to  avian 
oology;  another  solely  to  the  coleoptera  among  insects;  or 
in  another  case  to  the  physiology  of  plants,  and  so  on. 

Speaking  for  our  own  country  alone,  it  is  very  gratify- 
ing to  Dote  the  constantly  increasing  value  placed  by  the 
medical  profession  at  large  upon  biological  knowledge; 
and  how  the  best  medical  schools  in  the  land  insist  upon  a 
thorough  course  in  biology  as  a  most  important  part  of  their 
curriculum.  And  there  is  every  reason  to  see  why  this 
should  be  so,  for  it  is  impossible  to  comprehend  fully  the 
structure  of  the  human  body  without  a  knowledge  of  the 
morphology  of  other  animals,  any  more  than  we  can  gain 
the  full  meaning  of  human  physiology  without  similar  re- 
searches into  the  physiology  of  all  other  organized  types 
of  the  other  divisions  of  the  animal  kingdom.  The  mor- 
phology, physiology  and  nature  of  plants  are  also  quite 
essential  to  the  trained  practitioner  of  physic;  as  is 
psychology,  and  as  complete  a  knowledge  as  possible  of 


78  LECTURES 

the  diseases,  the  origin  and  history  of  all  morbid  growths, 
and  the  repair  of  injuries  among  all  kinds  of  animals 
whatsoever.  Human  reproduction  and  development  is 
another  subject  that  would  be  doomed  to  wear  a  very 
one-sided  aspect  unless  the  study  was  rendered  clear 
through  the  aid  of  comparisons  carried  into  the  other 
groups  of  the  vertebrata.  Many  of  the  mvertebrata  and 
their  several  modes  of  development  have  also  their  value, 
especially  certain  parasitical  forms  and  the  like.  Finally, 
the  entire  study  of  all  those  microscopical  species 
grouped  under  the  various  genera  of  bacteria  and  their 
allies,  forms  a  very  important  part  of  a  medical  course, 
and  in  reality  falls  within  the  science  of  biology. 

In  closing,  we  may  truthfully  say,  then,  that  as  im- 
portant as  a  sound  knowledge  of  his  science  is  to  the  pro- 
fessional biologist;  as  absolutely  indispensable  as  is  a 
practical  comprehension  of  the  subject  to  the  properly 
educated  medical  man;  it  is  none  the  less  so  as  forming 
a  part  of  the  training  and  education  of  any  person,  what- 
soever, in  the  present  day  and  generation,  or  of  him  who 
makes  any  pretension  to  having  received  in  his  schooling 
that  kind  of  instruction  which  fits  him  for  the  real  battle 
of  life  and  a  clear  understanding  of  a  great  many  of  the 
problems  that  he  will  be  called  upon  to  face  in  this 
Nineteenth-Century-day  life  of  ours. 


IV. 
Its  Growth  and  Future  Influence. 


It  would  hardly  seem  at  all  within  the  range  of  prob- 
ability that  at  any  time  in  the  future  there  will  ever  be 
added  another  to  the  main  divisions  of  biology,  as  I  have 
already  given  them  to  you;  or,  in  other  words,  the  scope 
of  human  knowledge  of  this  kind  is  now  so  wide  in  so  far 
as  the  consideration  of  living  matter  on  the  globe  is  con- 
cerned that  the  division  of  the  science  into  morphology, 
distribution,  physiology,  and  aetiology  will  stand  for  all 
time  as  capable  of  receiving,  as  a  natural  classificatory 
scheme,  anything  that  her  students  of  the  future  will  re- 
veal, or  are  likely  to  bring  to  light.  No  doubt,  as  the 
science  becomes  more  specialized,  more  or  fewer  sub- 
divisions will  of  necessity  be  differentiated  and  recog- 
nized within  the  departments  in  chief,  and  it  will  be 
along  these  subdivisional  lines  that  the  growth  of  biology 
will  take  place,  and  its  extension  be  appreciated.  Even 
at  this  very  hour,  the  scalpel  and  the  microscope  are 
ever  busy  in  the  hands  of  science,  investigating  the 
structure  of  every  kind  of  existing  animal  and  all 
varieties  of  plants  in  many  parts  of  the  world.  These  re 
searches  will  go  steadily  on  and  that,  too,  in  greater  and 
greater  number,  in  an  ever  widening  field,  and  with  an 
ever  increasing  interest  and  ardor. 

As  we  are  all  aware,  morphology  constitutes  one  of  the 
most  important  divisions  of  biology,  and  it  is  plain  that 
there  can  be  but  one  limit  to  its  work,  and  that  is  when 
we  are  in  possession  of  a  full  and  correct  account  of  the 
struture  of  every  species  of  animal  or  organism  now  ex- 
isting in  the  world's  fauna,  as  well  as  an  equally  full 
knowledge  of  the  structure  of  the  entire  vegetable  world 
from  the  very  lowest  forms  of  plant  life  to  the  most  high 
and  complex  ones.  Not  only  that,  but  such  a  far-reach- 
ing knowledge  should  be  made  comparative  in  every 
sense  of  the  word,  and  include  a  complete  cjmprehension 
of  every  kind  of  structural  anomaly.  Moreover,  those 


\J 


80  LECTURES 

investigations  will  be  so  extended  as  to  include,  apart 
from  the  question  of  distribution,  exhaustive  accounts  of 
the  comparative  morphology  of  all  the  fossil  remains  of 
animals  and  plants  that  the  explorations  of  the  palaeon- 
tologist of  the  future  will  have  been  so  fortunate  as  to 
have  discovered.  At  the  present  rate  of  progress,  which 
in  its  way  is  quite  marvelous,  this  will,  nevertheless,  en- 
tail the  labors  of  the  hands  and  minds  of  biologists  for 
generations  and  ages  to  come.  For,  in  these  days,  you 
must  understand,  we  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  mastered 
more  than  an  average  comparative  knowledge  of  the  lead- 
ing types  of  the  world's  flora  and  fauna.  Much  that  we 
pretend  to  know  nowadays  is  gotten  at  by  the  reliance 
we  place  in  the  general  uniformity  of  plan  and  structure 
throughout  all  Nature,  animated  and  otherwise.  This, 
for  the  present,  carries  us  very  safely  for  a  long  ways,  yet 
every  scientist  fully  appreciates  the  fact,  that  our  knowl- 
edge can  only  be  real  when  the  yet  unexamined  structures 
have  all  been  exhaustively  investigated.  In  connection 
with  this,  too,  it  must  be  remembered  that  a  great  many 
plants  still  exist  in  as  yet  unexplored  parts  of  the  world 
which  have  not,  for  that  reason,  come  into  the  hands  of 
science  at  all. 

What  I  have  just  said  of  morphology  applies  with  equal 
truth  to  physiology,  and  what  is  now  much  of  an  a  priori 
nature  in  our  knowledge  in  this  science  will  become  in 
the  iar  distant  future  real  and  actual  through  exhaust- 
ive observations  upon  the  functions  of  every  possible 
tissue  and  organ  throughout  the  entire  range  of  animal 
and  plant  life  as  now  existing  in  the  world. 
It  is  believed  that  such  a  full  and  comparative 
knowledge  of  function  will,  during  ages  to  come,  grow 
and  develop  pari passu  with  the  growth  of  our  knowledge 
of  structure,  and  the  two  continually  flash  light  adown 
each  other's  paths  of  advancement. 

There  is  no  structure  throughout  all  animated  Nature 
that  has  received  anything  like  the  amount  of  anatomical 
examination  and  research  as  has  the  body  of  man.  For 
centuries  it  has  been  the  subject,  the  species  above  all 
others,  that  has  engaged  the  close  attention  of  the 
morphologist,  physician  and  student.  Both  sexes  and 
the  young  of  all  stages  have  come  in  equally  for  their 
share  of  it;  while  man's  development  has  been  passed 
thousands  of  times  in  review  by  investigators  stamped 
with  every  shade  of  ability.  Notwithstanding  all  this  there 
still  remains  not  a  little,  both  in  the  anatomy  and  physi- 
ology of  man,  which  is  still  within  the  grasp  of  the  un- 


ON  BIOLOGY.  81 

known.  Several  of  the  structures  and  organs  of  our 
bodies  are  still  enigmas  to  us  in  so  far  as  we  have  been 
enabled  to  appreciate  their  morphological  significance. 
The  same  strictures  apply  to  the  functions  or  to  the 
physiology  of  those  organs.  Much  in  the  developmental 
and  homological  history  of  man's  skeleton  is  still  obscure, 
and  especially  is  this  true  of  the  skull.  Even  in  ap- 
parently so  simple  a  system  as  the  muscular,  or  in  the 
case  of  the  ligaments,  we  still  are  presented  with  prob- 
lems that  up  to  the  present  time  have  remained  unsolved. 
Still  greater  difficulties  have  been  met  in  the  case  of  some 
of  the  structures  of  the  brain  and  general  nervous  sys- 
tem; in  the  suprarenal  capsules,  the  thyroid  and  thymus 
glands;  the  spleen;  special  structures  of  the  eye,  ear  and 
tongue;  and,  indeed,  the  list  when  taken  as  a  whole,  is, 
as  I  have  just  said,  not  a  short  one. 

Now  if  this  be  the  case  with  man,  it  is  not  difficult  to 
imagine  how  vast  must  yet  be  the  store  of  facts  still  un- 
revealed  in  the  entire  range  of  the  morphology  of  all  other 
animals  and  plants  apart  from  him.  As  I  have  stated 
several  times  we  are  in  possession  of  the  main  fundamen- 
tal plan  of  structure  that  characterizes  animals  in  Nature 
to  be  sure,  yet  how  ignorant  we  still  are  of  the  well-nigh 
limitless  array  of  the  details  of  structure.  And  it  is  the 
discovery  of  the  presence  and  meaning  of  these  special 
structural  details  in  certain  forms  which  will  explain  not 
only  the  morphological  significance  of  the  obscure  points 
in  man's  anatomy,  but  the  corresponding  ones  in  all  those 
other  animals  wherein  the  new  structure  is  found  to 
exist. 

Permit  me  to  present  you  with  one  or  two  examples 
exhibiting  the  manner  in  which  the  discovery  of  new 
structures  in  the  lower  animals  not  only  throws  light 
upon  the  corresponding  structures  in  allied  forms,  but 
also  often  upon  the  most  obscure  points  in  the  anatomy 
of  man.  Now  there  is  a  small,  glandular  structure  at 
the  base  of  the  brain  in  all  men,  and  in  all  mammals,  so 
far  as  I  can  recollect,  which  bears  the  name  of  the  pineal 
gland.  Until  within  a  very  recent  time  the  uses  of  this 
structure  were  entirely  unknown,  and  not  a  work  upon 
either  human  anatomy  or  physiology  threw  any  light 
upon  the  subject.  Descartes  supposed  it  to  be  the  seat 
of  the  soul!  But  the  nineteenth  century  biologist  knows 
better  than  that,  at  least;  for,  thanks  to  the  researches  of 
Baldwin  Spencer,  of  England,  made  in  1886,  we  have,  I 
think,  a  better  solution  of  the  case.  Mr.  Spencer,  in 
making  dissections  upon  that  unique  form  of  lizard  from 


82 


LECTURES 


New  Zealand,  known  to  the  zoologist  as  Hatteria,  discov- 
ered that  it  possessed  on  the  vertex  of  its  skull,  in  the 
mid-parietal  region,  a  small  perforation  or  foramen,  and 
in  the  brain  beneath  it,  in  the  median  plane,  the  more 
than  evident  rudiments  of  an  eye — a  third,  mid-brain 
eye.  This  structure  was  connected  with  the  brain  below 
by  its  nervous  stalk,  the  proximal  extremity  of  which,  or 
its  root,  corresponding  to  the  origin  of  the  glandular 
structure  just  spoken  of  as  the  pineal  gland,  which  occurs 
in  so  many  other  animals.  Morphologists  immediately 
examined  a  great  variety  of  other  lizards  in  various  parts 
of  the  world,  and  many  were  found  to  possess  it  in  differ- 
ent states  of  perfectness.  Tracing  it  through  the  animal 
series,  it  soon  became  evident  that  in  its  nearly  com- 
pletelv  rudimentary  condition  in  man  and  the  higher 
mammalia  it  is  now  but  represented  in  them  by  the 
pineal  gland,  or  the  basal,  vestigal  end  of  the  nervous 
root-stalk. 

Another  very  interesting  example  of  this  sort  is  the 
discovery,  a  few  years  ago,  by  my  talented  friend,  Dr.  J. 
Bland  Button,  the  British  anatomist,  of  the  morphologi- 
cal import  of  the  round  ligament  of  the  hipjoint.  This 
structure  has  long  been  an  anatomical  puzzle,  and  is 
technically  known  to  aratomists  as  the  ligamentum  teres. 
In  man  it  is  a  round  ligamentous  cord  passing  from  a 
shallow  pit  on  the  head  of  the  thighbone  to  the  base  of 
the  articulaiory  socket  for  that  bone  situated  at  the 
side  of  the  pelvis.  All  sorts  of  opinions  have  been  held 
concerning  its  nature,  but  the  researches  of  Dr.  Sution 
have,  it  would  appear,  settled  the  question;  and  he  has 
quite  conclusively  shown  that  the  ligamentum  teres  must, 
originally  have  formed  a  part  of  the  pectineus  muscle, 
one  of  the  muscles  of  the  upper  part  of  the  thigh  and 
hip.  The  ligament  is  very  generally  found  in  the  mam- 
malia, though  that  class  offers  a  number  of  remarkable 
exceptions.  So  far  as  at  present  known  but  one  bird  lacks 
it,  and  that  is  the  cassowary  (Casuarius  appendiculata), 
while  in  reptiles  it  has  thus  far  been  found  to  be  univer- 
sally present,  being  represented  by  a  ligamentous  band. 

"It  is  in  the  horse  that  we  first  get  the  glimpse  of  the 
true  nature  of  the  ligament,  for  in  this  animal  it  consists 
of  two  parts,  one  hidden  within  the  joint  termed  the  coty- 
loid  portion,  the  other  passes  out  of  the  cavity  to  join  the 
linea  alba  at  its  jumction  with  the  pubes,  hence  it  is 
termed  the  pubio-femoral  portion.  From  this  band  the 
pectineus  takes  origin.  *  ' 

"In  the  ostrich  the  ligamentum  teres  has  a  true  tendinous 


ON  BIOLOGY.  83 

structure.  It  is  dense  and  strong,  contains  a  large  quan- 
tity of  yellow  elastic  tissue  arranged  iufasciculi,  as  in  the 
tendon  of  a  muscle."  (Sutton.) 

Now  the  ambiens  is  another  remarkable  muscle  of  the 
thigh  in  birds  which  has  very  much  excited  the  interest 
of  morphologists,  and  in  the  adult  ostrich  it  is  seen  to  be 
connected  by  fibrous  tissue  whh  our  ligamentum  teres.  In 
the  chick  of  th-;  ostrich  this  fibrous  tissue  is  seen  to  be  a 
muscular  slip,  and  Sutton  believes,  on  the  best  of  evi- 
dence, that  that  muscular  slip  and  the  ambiens  repre- 
sent the  mammalian  pectineus  muscle.  He  is  then  en- 
abled to  trace  its  varying  relations  and  conditions  from 
the  lizard  Sphenodon  to  man,  proving  most  conclusively 
its  true  nature  as  I  have  just  given  it.  The  account,  or 
rather  chapter,  is  concluded  by  his  saying: 

"There  is  no  ligament  in  the  body  which  can  boast 
such  an  extensive  literature,  or  has  exercised  more  the 
ingenuity  of  physiologists  and  surgeons  than  the  one  we 
have  been  considering."  *  *  *  * 

"Teleologists  like  Paley  have  been  enraptured  with 
this  structure,  and  anatomists  have  ascribed  to  it  won- 
derful mechanical  resistance  and  uses.  Alas!  in  this,  as 
in  so  many  like  cases,  morphology  demands  for  it  a  low 
level,  and  determines  it  to  be  a  vestigial  and  practically 
useless  ligament.  In  this  sense  teleology  Is  as  poetry,  but 
morphology  as  plain  history." 

These  two  very  excellent  illustrative  examples  will 
serve  to  show  the  direction  of  the  lines  along  which  mor- 
phology of  the  future  must  of  necessity  progress;  and  the 
advance  of  the  science  of  physiology  will  be  quite  in  keep- 
ing with  it.  And,  it  may  be  said,  inasmuch  as  the  first 
stands  for  all  those  phenomena  of  living  organisms  which 
relate  to  form,  and  ihe  latter  for  all  those  which  relate  to 
action,  that  however  independently  these  two  lines  of  in- 
quiry may  be  progressing  now,  the  day  must  assuredly 
arrive  when  biologists  will  appreciate  that,  perhaps, 
after  all,  but  one  outcome  is  common  to  the  two,  and  it 
is  indicated  by  the  same  molecular  processes.  Foster 
has  recently  said: 

"The  problems  of  physiology  may  in  a  broad  sense  be 
spoken  of  as  threefold.  (1)  On  the  one  hand,  we  have  to 
search  the  laws  according  to  which  the  complex,  un- 
stable food  is  transmuted  into  the  still  more  complex  and 
still  more  unstable  living  flesh,  and  the  laws  according 
to  which  this  living  substance  breaks  down  into  simple, 
stable  waste  products,  void  or  nearly  void  of  energy.  (2) 
On  the  other  hand,  we  have  to  determine  the  laws  ac- 


84  LECTURES 

cording  to  which  the  vibrations  of  the  nervous  substance 
originate  from  extrinsic  and  intrinsic  causes,  the  laws  ac- 
cording to  which  these  vibrations  pass  to  and  fro  in  the 
body,  acting  and  reacting  upon  each  other,  and  the  laws 
according  to  which  they  finally  break  up  and  are  lost, 
either  in  those  larger  swings  of  muscular  contraction 
whereby  the  movements  of  the  body  are  effected,  or  in 
some  other  way.  (3)  And,  lastly,  we  have  to  attack  the 
abstruser  problems  of  how  these  neural  vibrations,  often 
mysteriously  attended  with  changes  of  consciousness,  as 
well  as  the  less  subtle  vibrations  of  the  contracting 
muscles,  are  wrought  out  of  the  explosive  chemical  de- 
compositions of  the  nervous  and  muscular  substances; 
that  is,  of  how  energy  of  chemical  action  is  transmuted 
into  and  serves  as  the  supply  of  that  vital  energy  which 
appears  as  movement,  feeling,  and  thought.'' 

These  being  the  lines  along  which  physiology  must 
progress,  my  inclinations  strongly  prompt  me  to  next 
point  out  to  you  what  will  probably 'be  some  of  the  ad- 
vances made  in  the  future,  in  "physiological  psychology," 
psychology  pure  acd  simple,  and  in  psychics;  for  I  am 
especially  interested  in  such  fields,  and  my  connections 
with  the  British  Society  for  Psychical  Research  have, 
through  the  admirable  "Proceedings"  they  publish,  given 
me  unusual  opportunity  to  keep  pace  with  the  science; 
but  neither  our  space  nor  our  time  will  admit  of  much  in 
this  direction.  The  society  I  have  just  mentioned  has, 
enrolled  among  its  long  list  of  corresponding,  active,  and 
associate  members,  many  distinguished  men  and  women 
of  many  nationalities,  and  all  are  heartily  interested  in 
the  progress  of  every  department  of  psychology.  We 
need  no  better  proof,  as  a  guarantee  of  its  sincerity  of 
purpose  and  aims,  than  to  see  the  names  of  Lord  Tenny- 
son, the  Right  Hon.  W.  E.  Gladstone,  the  bishops  of 
Carlisle  and  of  Ripon,  John  Ruskin,  and  a  host  of  other 
weighty  names — as  we  do — upon  its  list  of  -members. 
Among  the  best  workers  of  the  society  there  is  a  strong 
tendency  to  treat  psychology  by  precisely  similar  methods 
whereby  we  deal  with  any  of  the  natural  sciences.  As- 
suming such  things  as  thoughts  and  feelings  to  exist  it  is 
contended  that  they  present  themselves  as  vehicles  of 
knowledge,  and  it  becomes  one  of  the  most  important 
tasks  of  the  psychologist  to  ascertain  by  strictly  scientific 
experimental  methods  the  correlations  existing  between 
those  various  sorts  of  thoughts  and  feelings  on  the  one 
hand,  with  the  definite  conditions  of  the  brain  on  the 
ther.  Bey  ond  such  premises  psychology  passes  into 


ON  BIOLOGY.  85 

metaphysics,  but  the  science  has  centuries  of  work  be- 
fore it  in  the  fields  I  have  just  indicated.  An  enormous 
amount  of  evidence  of  all  kinds,  and  often  of  the  most 
peculiar  kinds,  has  been  submitted  to  the  society  for  its 
consideration,  and  the  great  mass  of  this  has  been 
critically  dealt  with  after  the  most  careful  scientific 
methods.  Mr.  Frederic  W.  H.  Myers,  one  of  the  two 
honorary  secretaries  of  the  society,  has  recently  said,  in 
referring  to  the  work  accomplished  by  its  efforts: 

"There  has  been  what  we  regard  as  adequate  evidence 
of  telepathy — a  power  of  direct  communication  from 
mind  to  mind— which  is  difficult  to  reconcile  with  the 
ordinary  materialistic  synthesis.  There  has  been  evi- 
dence also — less  in  quantity,  but  to  me  convincing — of 
clairvoyance,  of  the  supernormal  acquisition  of  knowl- 
edge as  to  present,  past,  and  perhaps  even  future  things. 
And  there  has  been  evidence  which  points  prima  facie  to 
the  agency  of  departed  personalities,  although  this  evi- 
dence has  also  been  interpreted  in  other  ways.'' 

These  convictions  of  Mr.  Myers  are  not  held  by  all 
the  members,  though  for  one  other  I  can  say  the  evi- 
dence that  has  been  submitted  and  examined  has  quite 
satisfied  me  of  the  truth  of  telepathy.  Further  than 
that,  1  have  nothing  to  say  at  present,  though  I  would 
add  it  must  be  fully  evident  to  anyone  that  the  results 
aimed  at,  were  they  attained  and  proven,  are  of  greater 
importance  to  all  mankind  than  the  sum  total  of  all  else 
that  can  ever  be  accomplished  by  every  other  science 
known  to  us  united. 

Finally,  the  society  has  added  very  materially  to  our 
knowledge  of  hj'pnotism,  hallucinations,  dreams,  pre- 
monitions, and  a  number  of  other  allied  subjects,  and 
progress  in  several  of  these  directions  is  very  satisfactory 
and  material. 

From  the  consideration  of  such  supreme  matters  as1  are 
offered  us  by  the  science  of  physchology,  we  pass  again 
to  take  to  note  of  the  growth  and  advancement  of  another 
department  of  biology  which  has  a  world-wide  interest 
for  all  lovers  of  Nature,  and  all  that  is  lovable  in  Nature. 
I  refer  to  that  science  which  to  both  the  popular  mind 
and  to  the  naturalist  has  for  ages  been  known  as  zoology — 
the  natural  history  of  animals,  pure  and  simple.  Taken 
as  a  whole  the  world  over,  progress  in  these  fields  of  re- 
cent years  has  been,  it  seems  to  me,  rather  in  the  direc- 
tion of  amassing  material  for  museums  and  private 
collections  than  of  making  carefully  recorded  and  ex- 
haustive accounts  of  the  life-histories  of  animals.  As 


86  LECTURES 

highly  important  as  it  is  in  its  way,  the  mere  accumula- 
tion of  specimens  of  either  animals  or  plants,  and  bestow- 
ing upon  them  appropriate  technical  names,  and  defining 
the  position  of  such  species  in  the  natural  system  is  by 
no  means  the  end  and  all  there  is  to  zoological  science. 
No  one,  I  think,  can  better  appreciate  the  great  value  of 
the  kind  of  material  of  which  I  speak,  than  I  do.  Take 
mammals,  for  example,  there  can  be  no  question  about 
the  desirability  of  collecting  both  alcoholic  specimens, 
skins,  and  skeletons  of  all  the  mammals  possible,  in  an 
country;  of  naming  them,  describing  them  and  classify- 
ing them,  as  far  as  the  material  will  admit.  Yet,  some- 
times, it  is  very  discouraging  to  go  into  our  large 
museums,  and,  upon  examining  those  specimens,  to  find 
really  how  very  little  we  know  of  the  life-histories,  the 
intimate  habits,  or  even  the  geographical  distribution  of 
the  specimens  that  have  been  so  carefully  collected.  In 
this  country  we  are,  even  to-day,  wonderfully  ignorant  of 
many  of  the  habits  of  some  of  our  commonest  and  most 
abundant  mammals,  and,  especially,  the  smaller  varieties 
of  them,  though  what  I  have  said  is  equally  applicable  to 
many  of  the  larger  forms. 

In  the.  majority  of  instances  in  the  case  of  the  latter 
this  is  very  unfortunate,  as  all  over  the  world  many  of 
them  are  rapidly  becoming  extinct,  and  some,  indeed, 
have  become  quite  so,  even  within  very  recent  times. 
Not  only  is  it  very  essential  that  we  should  possess  as 
complete  accounts  as  possible  of  the  entire  morphology 
of  all  the  forms  to  which  I  have  reference,  but  upon  all 
occasions,  wherever  and  whenever  opportunity  offers, 
both  in  Nature  and  in  the  zoological  gardens,  we  should 
make  most  careful  observations  upon  every  trait  any  par- 
ticular animal  exhibits.  And,  above*  all  else,  such  studies 
should  be  made  comparative  and  the  comparisons  based 
upon  true  scientific  methods.  It  is  desirable  to  know  as 
accurately  as  possible  the  exact  geographical  range  and 
distribution  of  each  species;  its  relative  abundance;  its 
rate  of  increase  or  decrease,  as  the  case  may  present;  its 
enemies  and  the  animals  which  it  itself  in  turn  attacks; 
the  diseases  and  parasites  to  which  it  is  subject;  its  food 
at  various  seasons  of  the  years,  and  its  choice  of  one  food 
when  deprived  by  any  cause  of  another;  its  habits  as 
affected  by.  the  seasons,  by  the  elements  and  by  vicissi- 
tudes of  climate;  its  peculiar  habits;  its  habits  in  confine- 
ment and  its  diurnal  and  nocturnal  habits;  its  changes  of. 
pelage;  all  that  refers  to  its  reproduction,  development, 
relations  of  the  sexes  and  their  behavior  when  associated; 


ON  BIOLOGY.  87 

the  way  in  which  they  rear  their  young:,  and  everything 
that  pertains  thereto;  and,  finally,  statistics  as  to  what 
economical  value  it  may  possess,  and  other  matters.  So  it 
will  be  seen  that,  in  the  case  of  any  species  of  mammal,  to 
give  a  complete  account  of  its  life-history  in  a  thoroughly 
scientific  manner  is  far  from  being  alight  task.  But  this 
is  by  no  means  all  I  would  exact  of  the  zoologist,  for  such 
hisiorical  accounts,  to  be  of  the  greatest  value,  should  be 
made  comparative  in  every  sense  of  the  word.  Habits 
and  all  the  other  matters  I  have  just  enumerated,  having 
been  collected  for  the  most  lowly  organized  types  of  the 
mammals  of  any  particular  family  or  group,  should  be 
properly  compared  with  the  corresponding  traits  as  found 
in  the  animals  next  above  them  in  the  same  group.  Then 
the  digested  data,  the  outcome  of  such  studies  when 
systemized,  should,  in  turn,  be  compared  with  the  simi- 
lar and  comparable  knowledge  derived  from  like  observa- 
tions upon  the  next  most  nearly  affined  group  or  family 
of  mammals,  and  that,  too,  the  next  higher  in  the  scale 
of  organization. 

Thus  it  should  be  carried  on  and  upward  through  the 
system,  from  the  most  lowly  organized  types  to  include 
the  various  genera  of  new  and  old  world  apes  and  their 
near  kin.  As  we  ascend  step  by  step  we  should  be  par- 
ticularly careful  to  note  any  new  habit  that  may  arise, 
especially  those  habits  which  appear  to*  indicate  any  ad- 
vance in  the  mental  faculties,  or  kindred  attributes. 
With  such  knowledge  at  our  command,  and  systemat- 
ically formulated  for  proper  use  we  are  in  a  position  to 
undertake  identically  the  same  kind  of  studies  in  the 
case  of  all  the  various  types  and  races  of  men,  or  the 
world's  anthropofaunae,  beginning  with  the  very  lowest 
types  of  man  known  to  us  and  ascending  the  scale  to 
those  most  highly  organized  in  all  particulars — physic- 
ally, mentally,  morally  and  intellectually.  It  is  very 
desirable  that  this  should  be  done,  done  well,  and  made 
thoroughly  comparative.  A  great  deal  has  been  done 
already  along  such  lines,  but  in  my  estimation  very  little 
in  comparison  with  what  is  actually  required.  By  such 
studies  much  light  may  be  thrown  upon  the  question  of 
the  origin  of  the  mental  powers  in  man;  the  tracing  of 
the  origin  of  language,  and  of  the  special  development  of 
the  intellect;  of  the  origin  and  development  of  the  moral 
qualities;  of  certain  desires  and  passions;  of  the  relations 
of  the  sexes;  origin  of  marriage;  and,  finally,  a  great  deal 
else  which  may  be  said  to  be  the  natural  outcome  of  the 
development  of  all  that  is  included  in  the  social  instincts 


88  LECTURES 

of  man.  Carrying  these  studies  a  little  further  along 
and  we  lay  down  the  true  principles  which  constitute 
the  foundations  of  the  science  of  sociology,  which,  in 
truth,  is  nothing  more  than  the  science  of  social  phe- 
nomena as  exhibited  in  human  society;  and  its  growth 
clearly  shows  it  to  belong  to  the  group  of  biological 
sciences. 

As  already  intimated,  we  may,  in  the  future,  and  that, 
too,  for  many  ages  to  come,  look  forward  to  an  ever- 
increasing  knowledge  of  the  science  of  distribution — the 
distribution  of  animals  and  plants  both  in  space  and  in 
time.  Whatever  may  be  the  amount,  however,  of  this 
knowledge  yet  to  be  possessed,  we  can  hardly  look  for 
anything  more  than  an  amplification,  by  an  accumula- 
tion of  an  enormous  array  of  additional  facts,  of  the 
scheme  and  of  the  laws  of  distribution  as  they  are  now 
known  to  us.  Progress  in  this  science,  in  the  future  will 
consist  in  a  refinement  in  detail  of  what  we  already  know 
about  the  distribution  of  the  world's  existing  florae  and 
faunas.  Many  new  species  of  organisms  will  come  to 
light,  but  as  they  do  we  will  sooner  or  later  come  to  be 
familiar  with  their  exact  geographical  ranges.  Among 
the  minuter  forms  of  life  this  will,  of  course, 
requires  much  research,  extending  over  many 
ages  of  time;  and  in  the  case  of  the  vast  majority  of  the 
smaller  types  of  marine  life  it  will  require  a  considerably 
longer  time  before  we  will  possess  any  exact  knowledge 
on  the  subject,  more  especially  in  the  case  of  the  deep- 
sea  forms.  Indeed  we  may  add  here  that  there  probably 
yet  remain  unknown  to  us  myraidsof  interesting  animals, 
of  all  kinds,  in  the  ocean's  depths,  but  even  these  the 
labors  of  our  marine  zoologists  are  slowly  bringing  to 
light.  As  to  the  distribution  of  plants  and  animals  in 
time,  pretty  much  the  same  kind  of  progress  is  indicated. 
Our  palseozoologists  and  our  paleeobotanists  in  the 
future,  no  doubt  will  have  their  explorations  rewarded 
by  the  discovery,  ever  and  anon,  of  many  specimens  of 
fossil  plants  and  animals  long  since  extinct.  These  dis- 
coveries will  in  their  turn  react  by  shedding  an  ever-in- 
creasing light  upon  the  question  of  the  distribution  of 
animal  and  plant  life  as  we  now  find  it  in  the  world,  and 
thus  solve  many  problems  which  are,  as  yet,  quite  ob- 
scure. Notwithstanding  this  view  of  the  case,  we  may 
look  at  any  time  for  interesting  developments  all  along 
the  line;  such  as,  for  example,  the  discovery  of  vertebrate 
life  in  the  Cambriam,  a  most  important  discovery  re- 


ON  BIOLOGY. 

cently  made  by  Mr.  Walcott  of  the  United  States  Geo- 
graphical Survey. 

Knowing  as  \ve  do  the  fundamental  morphological  plan 
of  structure  as  it  is  variously  exemplified  among  the 
several  orders  of  plants;  the  main  groups  of  the  inverte- 
brata;  and  among  the  vertebrates;  we  can  look  for  nothing 
more  among  all  the  paheonlotoglcal  material  which  will 
assuredly  be  brought  to  light  in  the  future  than  interest- 
ing modifications  of  those  several  plans  of  structure. 
Such  discoveries  in  some  instances,  undoubtedly,  will 
bring  before  us  some  very  remarkable  facts,  but  they 
will  ever  be  in  harmony  with  the  facts  already  known  to 
us.  The  most  we  can  look  for  in  such  directions  is  a 
progressive  refinement  in  our  knowledge  of  the  affinities 
of  existing  organisms,  and  the  affinities  of  i he  various 
species,  genera,  and  families  long  since  extinct.  Light 
will  constantly  also  be  thrown  upon  the  morphological 
enigmas  as  they  now  stand  to  us  among  many  of  the  ex- 
isting species  of  animals  and  plants. 

The  fact  I  wish  to  distinctly  impress  however,  is  that 
our  knowledge  of  morphology,  in  general,  is  at  present  of 
such  a  nature  that  it  absolutely  admits  of  our  prophesy- 
ing, from  the  known  data  of  the  anatomical  character  of 
animals  or  plarts  in  our  possession,  what  kind  of  forms 
we  will  probably  meet  with  among  the  yet  undiscovered 
fossil  tjpes  in  the  future.  Such  prophecies  have  in 
several  instances  actually  been  made,  and  it  is  one  of  the 
grandest  triumphs  of  which  humanity  has  to  boast,  that 
in  a  number  of  cases  those  prophecies  have  actually  been 
fulfilled.  For  instance,  the  fundamental  plan  of  the 
hand  and  foot  among  all  the  higher  types  of  vertebrates 
is  pentadactyle,  or  five  digits  upon  either  member.  Now 
when  we  discovered  the  fossil  Orohippus  in  the  line  of  the 
ancestors  of  our  modern  horse,  it  was  seen  that  it  had  but 
four  complete  toes  on  the  front  limb  and  three  toes  upon 
the  hind  limb.  The  prophesy  was  made,  based  upon  our 
knowledge  of  the  fundamental  plan  of  the  foot  and  hand 
in  the  group  to  which  it  belonged,  that  if  we  were  ever  so 
fortuna'e  as  to  meet  with  the  ancestral  form  from  which 
Orohippus  was  derived  it  would  approach  still  nearer  the 
pentadactyle  type.  A  number  of  years  afterward  the 
prophecy  was  most  beautifully  fulfilled  by  the  discovery 
of  the  fossil  Eohippus,  in  the  ancestral  line  of  the  horses, 
which  supplied  the  required  conditions. 

Permit  me  to  present  you  with  one  more  instance  of 
this  kind — not  the  first  one  that  has  happened,  nor,  mark 
my  word,  will  it  be  the  last  one  of  a  similar  nature:  The 


90  LECTURES 

lesson  it  teaches  those  who  may  be  more  or  less  unin- 
formed in  such  matters — and  everyone  here  present  being 
on  the  right  side  of  the  line,  may  smile  at  the  class  to 
whom  I  refer — is  invaluable.  It  will  well  exemplify  the 
certitude  of  the  predictions  of  biologists  in  such  premises, 
equipped  as  they  are  with  their  present-day  acquired 
morphological  facts,  as  it  likewise  proclaims  that  it  is 
not  even  necessary  to  have  in  our  possession  the  entire 
skeleton  of  the  fossil  remains  of  the  animal  discovered  to 
safely  predict  as  to  its  position  in  the  natural  system.  A 
split  slab  of  stone,  of  considerable  geological  age,  from 
the  quarries  of  Montmartre  is  presented  to  the  distin- 
guished French  savant  Cuvier.  Its  two  halves  contain 
the  greater  part  of  the  skeleton  of  a  small  mammal,  but 
only  a  few  of  the  teeth  of  the  lower  jaw  happen  to  be 
exposed,  and  these  Cuvier  carefully  examines.  The 
exposed  material  you  will  at  once  appreciate  is  but  frag- 
mentary, yet  that  sagacious  French  biologist  made  no 
hesitation  in  pronouncing  the  animal  an  opossum,  guided 
as  he  was  by  the  evidence  in  sight,  and  duly  assigned  the 
fossil  to  that  genus.  Opossums  are  unlike  most  of  the 
mammalia,  inasmuch  as  they  possess  two  small  bones, 
articulated  mesially  to  the  fore  part  of  the  pelvis,  which 
have  been  called  the  "marsupial  bones,"  but  the  function 
of  which  has  not  been  definitely  determined.  Now,  al- 
though the  animal  Cuvier  had  in  hand  had  been  dead  and 
fossilized  and  encased  in  rock  for  untold  ages,  he  prophe- 
sied that  when  they  came  to  clear  away  the  matrix  which 
contained  it  there  would  be  discovered,  in  front  of  the 
pelvis,  the  two  usual  bones  that  characterize  that  part  of 
the  skeleton  in  the  opossums,  and  this  prediction  he  made 
from  an  examination,  you  will  remember,  of  only  a  few 
of  the  teeth.  Other  naturalists  were  invited  to  witness 
tne  disinterment,  so  confident  was  Cuvier  of  his  predic- 
tion, and,  be  it  said  to  the  credit  of  biological  science,  he 
was  most  eminently  correct  in  his  ideas,  for  the  marsu- 
pial bones  of  the  fossil  were  duly  exposed  in  situ.  Now 
the  application  of  such  a  philosophy  as  this  not  only 
holds  true  of  mammals,  but  it  holds  true  of  all  animals 
and  plants  whatsoever,  that  have  ever  existed  since  the 
beginning  of  the  world.  Not  only  this,  but  with  the  in- 
crease and  the  better  knowledge  of  such  material,  our 
prophecies  can  be  made  with  an  ever  increasing  certainty 
of  their  correctness,  so  that,  in  time,  without  ever  having 
seen  certain  fossil  animals  at  all,  it  will  become  possible 
for  the  skilled  palaeontologist  to  very  closely  designate 
the  various  kinds  that  must  have  of  necessity  existed; 


ON  BIOLOGY.  91 

that  is,  must  have  existed  in  order  to  complete  the  gene- 
alogical tree  of  all  animal  and  plant  forms,  applying,  as 
I  do,  the  same  statement  to  botany.  Or,  as  Huxley 
puts  it: 

"The  same  method  of  reasoning  which  enables  us, 
when  furnished  with  a  fragment  of  an  extinct  animal,  to 
prophesy  the  character  whicn  the  whole  organism  ex- 
hibited, will,  sooner  or  later,  enable  us,  when  we  know  a 
few  of  the  later  terms  of  a  genealoaical  series,  to  predict 
the  nature  of  the  earlier  terms."  Professor  Cope,  our  dis- 
tinguished American  palaeontologist,  upon  one  instance, 
at  least,  has  already  verified  what  I  have  just  quoted  from 
Huxley;  for  long  before  iis  discovery  he  prophesied  what 
the  main  osteological  characters  of  one  of  the  ancestors  of 
a  certain  group  of  fossil  animals  essentially  must  have 
been,  and  that  such  and  such  an  animal  certainly  must 
have  existed.  Years  later  not  only  was  the  fossil  found, 
but  it  was  characterized  by  possessing  a  skeleton  such  as 
Cope  predicted  it  would  possess,  and  that  skeleton  is  now 
in  the  hands  of  science 

Taken  collectively  the  progress  of  that  department  of 
biology  which  we  now  have  under  consideration  will  be 
represented  then,  in  the  future,  by  the  progress  made 
along  the  lines  developed  by  the  palaeontologist;  the 
student  of  the  distribution  of  animal  and  plant  forms  in 
time;  and  lastly,  the  zoogeographer,  or  him  who  deals 
with  the  science  of  the  distribution  of  all  forms  of  life  in 
space. 

The  combined  results  of  the  laborers  in  these  fields  will 
be  an  elaboration  of  our  knowledge  of  the  true  affinities 
existing  among  all  animals,  both  in  time  and  in  space,  as 
well  as  the  true  affinities  existing  among  all  plants,  from 
their  beginning  in  time  up  to  include  all  modern  florae. 
The  trunks,  the  main  branches,  the  principal  limbs,  and 
even  many  of  the  twiglets  of  these  two  mighty  genealogi- 
cal trees  are  now  well  known  to  us,  so  well  known,  indeed, 
that  it  is  hard  for  me  to  conceive  of  any  discoveries  that 
may  be  made  by  the  palaeontologist  in  the  ages  to  come 
that  could  excite  in  the  philosophic  biologist  anything 
that  could  at  all  be  likened  to  puzzled  wonderment.  The 
unfinished  offshoots  of  the  genealogical  tree  of  descent 
await  the  engraftment  upon  them  of  the  yet  undiscov- 
ered fossil  forms  concealed  within  the  solid  crust  of  the 
earth;  and  however  extravagant  the  modifications  of  many 
of  those  forms  may  prove  to  be,  we  are  well  assured  that 
they  can  only  be  modifications  in  any  case  of  the  at- 
present-known  types  of  structure  now  existing  in  nature; 


92  LECTURES 

and  so,  however  intense  the  interest  they  may  excite,  they 
can  create  no  such  thing  as  revolutionary  surprises.  They 
will  have,  however,  beyond  all  doubt,  the  effect  of  con- 
stantly making  clearer  and  clearer  our  conceptions  of  the 
material  scheme  of  the  universe;  the  operations  of  natural 
laws;  and  the  interrelationship  and  interdependence  of  all 
living  things  since  life  first  appeared  upon  earth.  It  is 
this  kind  of  progress  which  is  taking  place  at  the  present 
hour,  and  will  continue  just  so  long  as  the  mind  of  man 
pleases  to  carry  his  inquiries  and  his  researches  into  such 
fields;  and  there  appears  to  be  no  evidence  at  this  time  of 
his  relinquishing  them. 

As  has  already  been  pointed  out,  the  kno'vn  phenomena 
of  biology  comprised  by  the  several  sciences  of  mor- 
phology, physiology  and  distribution  are  constantly  lead- 
ing us  up,  face  to  face,  to  that  question  of  all  questions, 
the  origination  of  living  matter  upon  this  planet,  and  the 
causes  which  have  led  to  it.  Such  knowledge  as  we 
possess  and  in  any  way  sheds  any  light  upon  this~subject, 
is  referred  to— as  I  have  already  said — in  that  fourth 
department  of  biology  designated,  as  you  know,  as 
aetiology;  and  it,  in  its  present  stage  of  development, 
must  be  considered  quite  in  its  infancy.  Especially  must 
this  be  regarded  as  the  case,  inasmuch  as  many  of  our 
most  competent  living  biologists  are  of  the  opinion,  an 
opinion  shared  by  myself,  that  we  are  as  yet  in  absolute 
ignorance  of  the  causes  which  have  led  to  the  origination 
of  living  matter.  From  the  very  nature  of  the  case 
palaeontology  will  never  be  enabled  to  furnish  us  with 
the  direct  evidence  of  the  character  of  the  primoidal 
forms  of  living  organisms,  much  less  the  proof  as  to  how 
those  forms  were  first  endowed  with  life.  Still,  evidence 
of  another  kind,  and  most  conclusive  evidence,  leaves  no 
doubt  in  our  minds  as  to  what  the  character  of  those 
primoidal  forms  must  have  been,  though  that  evidence 
leaves  us  still  utterly  in  the  dark  as  to  how  life  arose  in 
them.  So  far  as  our  present-day  knowledge  carries  us, 
everything  seems  to  point  to  the  conclusion  entertained 
by  most  scientists  that  all  planets  and  stars,  alike,  now 
composing  the  universe,  are  either  at  present  In  a  gaseous 
state  or  have  at  some  time  or  other  passed  through  such 
a  stage.  Further,  we  have  every  reason  to  believe  that 
this  planet  has  likewise  passed  through  a  similar  stage, 
and  that  being  the  case  its  condition  at  that  time  must 
have  been  Such  that  no  living  matter  could  have  possibly 
existed  upon  it.  From  this  we  are  led  to  infer  that  liv- 
ing matter  must  originally  have  arisen  from  non-living 


ON  BIOLOGY.  93 

matter,  an  hypothesis — it  may  be  said  in  passing — quite 
in  harmony  with  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  Science,  as 
yet,  is  not  in  possession  of  any  direct  evidence  which 
could  be  considered  demonstrative  of  the  fact  that  any 
such  a  phenomenon  has  ever  taken  place  in  Nature  at 
any  time  within  the  period  of  the  recorded  existence  of 
life  upon  the  earth.  You  will  remember  that  I  said  such 
a  theory  is  spoken  of  as  the  theory  of  abiogenesis.  and 
although  we  have  no  trustworthy  proof  of  its  actual 
occurrence,  "it  need  hardly  be  pointed  out,"  as  Huxley 
says,  that  that  "fact  does  not  in  the  slightest  degree 
interfere  with  any  conclusion  that  may  be  arrived  at 
deductively  from  other  considerations  that,  at  some  other 
time  or  other,  abiogenesis  must  have  taken  place."  From 
these  premises  we  are  compelled  to  believe  that  the 
progress  for  aetiology  in  the  future  must  be  the  accumu- 
lation of  evidence  in  support  of  those  other  considera- 
tions to  which  allusion  has  just  been  made,  and  that 
such  evidence  will  in  time  be  forthcoming  I  make  no 
manner  of  doubt,  any  more  than  I  entertain  any  doubt  in 
my  mind  that  the  deduction  which  can  be  made  from  it 
will  be  so  weighty  that  it  will  place  the  question  of 
abiogenesis  upon  as  secure  a  foundation,  in  so  far  as  its 
occurrence  is  concerned,  as  that  of  any  other  inductive 
hypothesis  which  has  been  accepted  as  good  as  proven  by 
all  thinking  people  who  ever  pay  any  attention  to  such 
matters. 

My  remarks  upon  this  subject  would  not  be  complete 
did  I  not  at  least  make  brief  allusion  to  the  provisional 
hypothesis,  advanced  by  Darwin,  which  he  termed  "pan- 
genesis,"  whereby  he  attempted  to  explain  the  phenom- 
ena of  reproduction  in  organisms.  In  one  of  his  works  he 
says: 

'•I  venture  to  advance  the  hypothesis  of  pangenesis, 
which  implies  that  every  separate  part  of  the  whole  or- 
ganization reproduces  itself.  So  that  ovules,  spermato- 
zoa, and  pollen-grains— the  fertilized  egg  or  seed,  as  well 
as  buds— include  and  consist  of  a  multitude  of  germs 
thrown  off  from  each  separate  part  or  unit," 

For  some  reason  or  other  this  hypothesis  does  not  seem 
to  have  excited  any  lasting  interest,  either  in  the  lay  or 
scientific  mind,  although  we  cannot  claim  that  as  any 
valid  proof  militating  against  its  truth,  and  that  is  a 
matter  which  time  and  amplification  of  our  knowledge 
in  the  premises  alone  can  settle. 

Even  the  biogenetic  view  of  the  origination  of  life  has 
its  enigmas  for  us  to  solve,  and  so  far  as  the  initial  ques- 


94  LECTURES 

tion  of  impregnation,  for  example,  is  concerned  even  the 
lucid  description  given  us  of  it  in  the  common  fowl  by 
the  late  distinguished  British  embryologist,  Mr.  Balfour, 
may  not  satisfy  the  minds  of  all  of  us  as  to  exactly  how 
life  actually  begins.  Mr.  Balfour  says  that  impregnation, 
in  the  case  of  the  chicken,  "occurs  in  the  upper  portion 
of  the  oviduct;  the  spermatozoa  being  found  actively 
moving  in  the  fluid  which  is  there  contained."  *  *  * 

"We  have  as  yet,  as  far  as  the  fowl  is  concerned,  no 
direct  observations  concerning  the  changes  preceding  and 
following  upon  impregnation;  nor,  indeed,  concerning  the 
actual  nature  of  the  act  of  impregnation."  * 

"In  other  types,  however,  these  processes  have  been 
followed  with  considerable  care,  and  the  result  has  been 
to  show  that  prior  to  impregnation  a  division  of  the 
ovum  takes  place  into  two  very  unequal  parts.  The 
smaller  of  these  parts  is  known  as  the  polar  body,  and 
plays  no  further  part  in  the  development.  In  the  course 
of  the  division  of  the  ovum  into  these  two  parts  the  ger- 
minal vesicle  also  divides,  and  one  part  of  it  enters  the 
polar  body  while  a  portion  remains  in  the  larger  segment, 
which  continues  to  be  called  the  ovum,  and  is  there 
known  as  the  female  pronucleus.  Impregnation  has  been 
found  to  consist  essentially  in  the  entrance  of  a  single 
spermatozoon  into  the  ovum,  followed  by  the  fusion  of 
the  two.  The  spermatozoon  itself  is  to  be  regarded  as  a 
cell,  the  head  of  which  corresponds  to  the  nucleus. 
When  the  spermatozoon  enters  the  ovum  the  substance 
forming  its  tail  becomes  mingled  with  the  protoplasm  of 
the  latter,  but  the  head  enlarges  and  constitutes  a  dis- 
tinct body  called  the  male  pronucleus,  which  travels 
toward  and  finally  fuses  with  the  female  pronucleus  to 
constitute  the  nucleus  of  the  impregnated  ovum." 

From  this  point  it  has  not  proved  especially  difficult 
for  the  trained  embryologist  to  trace  the  development  of 
the  chick  of  the  fowl  to  that  stage  of  development  when 
it  quits  the  eggshell  that  incases  it  during  the  early 
stages  of  its  existence.  And  it  may  be  said  that  the 
statements  we  have  quoted  from  Mr.  Balfour  may  carry 
with  them  considerable  comfort  to  him  who  entertains 
the  biogenetic  view  of  the  origination  of  living  matter, 
still  it  seems  to  us  that  even  a  little  more  light  in  this 
direction  would  not  come  altogether  amiss.  One,  for  in- 
stance, almost  fesls  Inclined  to  ask,  what  is  the  nature  of 
the  life  as  exhibited  on  the  part  of  the  spermatozoon?  I 
have  examined  the  live  spermatozoon  of  the  highest  types 
of  vertebrates  known  to  us,  and  am  familiar  with  the 


ON  BIOLOGY.  95 

physiology  of  the  Protamaba  and  the  tadpole,  and  am 
tree  to  confess  tbat  i  would  be  glad  to  have  11  made  c  ear 
to  me  that  ihe  living  principle,  the  verv  essence  of  life  is 
identical  in  all  three  of  these  organisms.  Still  more 
would  I  be  slad  to  know  the  precise  difference  'twixt  a 
live  amceba  and  a  dead  one;  'twixt  a  live  bp-rmatozoon 
and  a  dead  one;  and,  finalb  ,  is  the  unimpregoated  ovum 
of  the  female  endowed  with  Jife,  or  is  life  simply  brought 
to  it  by  the  male  spermatozoon?  Surely  ihe  >oung 
science  of  aetiology  has  many  questions  to  answer  for  us. 
Finally,  we  have  the  words  of  Huxley  upon  this  sub- 
ject, in  his  able  address  on  ''spontaneous  generation," 
delivered  before  the  British  Association  for  the  Advance- 
ment of  Science,  at  the  Liverpool  meeting,  in  September, 
1870;  and  although  that  is  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century 
ago,  it  yet  remains  a  very  clear  exriosition  of  the  case, 
and  he  then  said:  "Though  I  cannot  express  this  convic- 
tion of  mine  too  strongly,  I  muse  carefully  guard  myself 
against  the  supposition  that  I  intend  to  suggest  that  no 
such  thing  as  abiogenesis  ever  has  taken  place  in  the  past 
or  ever  will  take  place  in  the  future.  With  organic 
chemistry,  molecular  physics  and  physiology  }et 
in  their  infancy  and  every  day  making  prodig- 
ious strides — I  think  it  would  be  the  height  of  presump- 
tion for  any  man  to  say  that  the  conditions  under  which 
matter  assumes  the  properties  we  call  'vital'  may  not 
some  dav,  be  artificially  brought  together.  All  I  feel 
justified  in  affirming  is,  that  I  see  no  reason  for  believing 
that  the  feat  has  been  performed  yet.  *  *  *  And, 
looking  back  through  the  prodigious  vista  of  the 
past,  I  find  no  record  of  the  commencement  of  life,  and, 
therefore,  I  am  devoid  of  any  means  of  forming  a  definite 
conclusion  as  to  the  conditions  of  its  appearance.  Belief, 
in  the  scientific  sense  of  the  word,  is  a  serious  matter  and 
needs  strong  foundations.  To  say,  therefore,  in  the  ad- 
mitted absence  of  evidence,  that  I  have  any  belief  as  to 
the  mode  in  which  the  existing  forms  of  life  have  origi- 
nated would  be  using  words  in  a  wrong  sense.  But  expec- 
tation is  permissible  where  belief  is  not;  and,  if  it  were 
given  me  10  look  beyond  the  abyss  of  geologically  recorded 
lime  to  the  still  more  remote  period  when  the  earth  was 
passing  through  physical  and  chemical  conditions  which 
it  can  no  more  see  again  than  a  man  can  recall  his 
infancy,  I  should  expect  to  be  a  witness  of  the  evolution 
of  living  protoplasm  from  not  living  matter.  I  should 
expect  to  see  it  appear  under  forms  of  great  simplicity, 
endowed,  like  existing  fungi,  with  the  power  of  deter- 


96  LECTURES 

mining  the  formation  of  new  protoplasm  from  such  mat- 
ters as  ammonium  carbonates,  oxalates  and  tartrates, 
alkaline  and  earthy  phosphates,  and  water,  without  the 
aid  of  light.  That  is  the  expectation  to  which  analogical 
reasoning  leads  me;  but  I  beg  you  once  more  to  recollect 
that  I  have  no  right  to  call  my  opinion  anything  but  an 
act  of  philosophical  faith."  *  *  * 

"So  much  for  the  history  of  the  progress  of  Redi's  great 
doctrine  of  biogenesis,  which  appears  to  me,  with  the 
limitations  I  have  expressed,  10  be  victorious  along  the 
whole  line  at  the  present  day." 

As  I  have  said,  these  convictions  of  Professor  Huxley's 
were  expressed  by  him  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago, 
and  in  the  interim  between  the  time  of  their  expression 
and  the  present  hour  the  keenest  methods  of  experimen- 
tation in  such  fields  have  been  steadily  kept  up  in  many 
laboratories,  by  the  most  competent  observers,  and  the 
result  has  been  that  an  ever-increasing  belief  in  the  idea 
that  abiogenesis  can  take  place;  that  is,  in  certain  low 
and  simple  organisms  we  may  have  living  matter  arise 
from  non-living  matter,  and  it  was  what  took  place  at 
the  dawn  of  life  upon  earth.  This  is  my  belief,  my  con- 
viction; and  its  complete  demonstration  when  accom- 
plished will  be  far  from  a  matter  of  surprise  to  me. 
During  the  last  century  we  have  wrested  so  many  of 
Nature's  secrets  from  her  that  I  feel  that  the  earnest 
truth-seekers  In  bijlogy  will  by  their  persistent  efforts  in 
such  directions  compel  her  to  surrender  this  one  likewise, 
perhaps  the  most  or  one  of  the  most  important  ones  she 
still  withholds  from  humanity. 

Biological  advance,  in  all  its  departments,  for  the  last 
half  century,  has,  as  we  are  all  well  aware,  most  power- 
fully influenced  the  entire  trend  of  human  thought,  and 
wherever  its  modern  doctrines  have  come  in  contact  with 
modern  society,  capable,  in  whole  or  in  part  of  logical 
reasoning,  they  hnve  had  the  effects  of  completely  revolu- 
tionizing many  of  its  time-honored  ideas,  and  much  of  its 
time-honored  philosophy.  To  those  who  have'kept  pace 
with  scientific  advance  during  rather  more  than  the 
latter  half  of  the  time  of  which  I  speak,  it  is  unnecessary 
to  recall  the  fact  that  that  revolution  came  upon  the  world 
of  thought  in  no  very  gentle  manner,  for  the  roar  of  its 
trained  artillery  and  the  rattle  of  iis  musketry  of  millions 
of  facts  thoroughly  aroused  every  mind  in  the  entire 
army  of  the  world's  thinkers.  And  controversies  of  the 
most  seething  nature  characterized  the  war  that  fol- 
lowed, and  may  hardly  yet  be  said  to  have  terminated, 


ON  BIOLOGY.  97 

though  where  facts  constitute  the  ammunition  used  the 
contest  cannot  be  long  prolonged. 

Your  lecturer  claims  not  to  be  quite  as  sanguine  as 
many  another  teacher  in  biology  with  whom  he  ha 
acquaintance,  but  he  has  that  faith  in  the  rate  at  which 
human  thought  is  now  moving  to  be  fully  of  the  opinion 
that  we  have  not  very  far  to  look  into  the  future  to  be 
enabled  to  see  the  time  when  the  fundamental  principles 
and  common  facts  of  biology  shall  be  taught,  and  prop- 
erly taught,  in  every  school  of  whatever  size  or  scope,  in 
the  country.  It  will  then  be  thought  quite  as  essential 
for  our  growing  youth  to  be  familiar  with  the  general 
features  of  the  anatomy  and  physiology  of  their  own 
bodies  as  it  will  be  to  be  able  to  give  the  leading 
Incidents  of  the  war  of  1812;  and,  perhaps,  be  considered 
equally  as  practical.  Moreover,  in  that  time,  when  it 
arrives,  it  will  be  considered  quite  as  derogatory  to  tbe 
name  of  a  liberal  education  to  have  our  youth  ignorant  of 
the  laws  of  descent  as  applied  to  all  living  organisms;  of 
the  laws  of  distribution;  and  the  names  and  general 
habits  of  the  fauna  of  his  own  land,  as  it  will  and  now  is 
to  have  them  ignorant  of  the  main  characters  of  the 
earth's  atmospheric  envelop  or  the  law  of  gravitation. 
To  me  there  is  no  better  indication  of  an  unbalanced, 
one-sided  education,  at  the  present  day,  than  to  find 
some  young  man  more  or  less  conversant  with  what  his 
physical  geography  has  to  teach  him  about  the  Arctic 
Ocean  currents,  and,  yet,  at  the  same  time,  laboring 
under  the  impression  that  the  biggest  creature  that 
habitually  swims  and  lives  therein— the  whale — is  "a 
great  fish;"  whereas,  any  elementary  text-book  in  zoolo- 
gy, upon  a  moment's  consultation  will  set  him  right,  and 
demonstrate  the  fact  that  a  whale  is  no  fish  at  all,  but  on 
the  other  hand  is  just  as  much  of  a  mammal  as  a  horse 
or  an  elephant,  with  all  the  main  characteristics  of  a 
mammal,  even  nursing  its  young  at  the  breast.  Yet 
this  is  but  one  case,  chosen  for  illustration,  from  among 
hundreds  of  others. 

One  of  the  greatest  living  expounders  of  modern 
science,  in  speaking  of  the  educational  value  of  biology 
in  general  and  of  physiology  in  particular,  has  said: 

"Biology  needs  no  apologist  when  she  demands  a  place 
— and  a  prominent  place — in  any  scheme  of  education 
worthy  of  the  name.  Leave  out  the  physiological  sciences 
from  your  curriculum  and  you  launch  the  student  into 
the  world  undisciplined  in  that  science  whose  subject- 
matter  would  best  develop  his  powers  of  observation; 


98  LECTURES 

ignorant  of  facts  of  the  deepest  importance  for  his  own 
and  others'  welfare;  blind  to  the  richest  sources  of  beauty 
in  God's  creation;  and  unprovided  witb.  that  belief  in  a 
living  law  and  an  order  manifesting  itself  in  and  through 
endless  change  and  variety,  which  might  serve  to  check 
and  moderate  that  phase  of  despair  through  which,  if  he 
take  an  earnest  interest  in  social  problems,  be  will  as- 
suredly sooner  or  later  pass."  (Huxley.) 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  are  we  not  awakening,  indeed, 
have  we  not  already  awakened  to  the  realization  of  the 
force  and  point  and  truth  of  all  that,  is  contained  in  the 
cogent  passage  we  have  just  quoted?  Have  we  not  very 
good  evidence  upon  all  sides,  however  slowly  it  may  be 
advancing  or  however  imperfectly,  of  just  such  changes 
being  introduced  into  the  workings  of  our  educational 
machine,  into  the  very  texture  of  all  our  educational 
schemes  everywhere?  There  can  be  no  doubt  about  it, 
and  one  must  have  his  eyes  shut,  in  these  da3rs,  with  a 
very  tight  squeeze,  who  fails  to  see  that  just  such 
changes  are  coming  about;  that  the  present  is  most  em- 
phatically an  age  of  transition  in  all  such  matters,  the 
like  of  which  has  never  been  seen  by  the  world  before, 
since  her  history  first  began.  No  one  can  doubt  for  a 
moment  how  powerful  the  influence  of  such  radical 
changes  in  our  educational  methods  will  prove  in  the 
future  of  the  race.  Yet,  it  constitutes  nothing  more  than 
an  evolution  of  ideas,  a  growth  quite  comparable  with 
the  evolvement  of  many  other  things  the  world  has  seen 
and  produced.  A  passage,  as  it  were,  from  an  age  more 
or  less  characterized  by  an  intellectual  thralldom,  to 
another  and  higher  one,  stamped  chiefly  by  an  almost 
universal  exercise  of  common  sense,  by  a  universal  dif- 
fusion and  absorption  of  all  kinds  of  knowledge,  and  a 
general  desire  to  arrive  at  the  real  truth  in  all  things;  to 
expose  Nature's  true  inwardness,  and  demonstrate  her 
every  law;  to  observe,  compare,  and  verify  every  new 
fact  acquired,  and  apply,  as  far  as  possible,  the  digested 
knowledge  thus  obtained  to  the  practical  ends  of  human 
pursuits. 

In  short,  then,  taking  the  science  of  biology  in  its  en- 
tirety, represented  by  its  enormous  army  of  actual  work- 
ers upon  the  one  hand  and  its  innumerable  host  of  sup- 
porters and  believers  on  the  other,  one  may  scrutinize  its 
ranks  from  the  head  of  the  column  to  the  last  file  closer 
in  the  rear,  and  it  will  be  seen  that  they  advance  under 
but  a  common  standard,  and  that  standard  has  embla- 
zoned upon  its  center  field  but  one  motto,  and  its  words 


ON  BIOLOGY.  99 

are:  "We  seek  the  truth  and  the  truth  only."  Such 
being  the  broad  field  of  its  operations;  such  its  progress; 
and  such  its  aims,  it  can  easily  be  conceived  by  all  who 
care  or  have  the  power  to  raise  themselves  in  their 
stirrups  and  scan  the  unexplored  domain  that  lies  in  the 
way  of  this  column's  advance,  or  those  who  may  be  found 
there  in  that  territory  to  meet  it,  what  its  influence  must 
be  in  the  future,  both  the  most  immediate  future,  and 
that  future  which  shall  close  the  career  of  man  upon 
earth. 

Truth  must  and  ever  will  powerfully  prevail;  and  when 
truth  is  brought  in  collision  with  those  human  opinions, 
those  human  institutions,  those  human  ideas  which  can- 
not bear  the  full  blaze  of  her  scrutiny,  there  can  be  but 
one  fate  for  them  all — they  are  completely  overcome,  and 
thereafter,  in  their  disarmed  state,  can  but  forever  stand 
aside,  as  beacons  of  human  experience,  to  pass  down  into 
human  history  as  perpetual  warnings  of  the  danger  to 
man's  progress,  that  danger  which  is  ever  represented  by 
erroneous  ideas  and  by  those  practices  uoguided  by  the 
knowledge  of  truth  and  the  knowledge  of  fact. 

Nations  and  governments  do  feel  now  and  must  feel 
still  more  in  the  future  the  influence  of  this  advance  in 
natural  knowledge,  for  nations  are  made  up  of  individ- 
uals, and  when  truth  pervades  the  part  it  must  eventu- 
ally pervade  the  whole.  But  nations  have  nothing  to 
fear  from  such  quarters,  and  onlv  benefit  can  follow, 
benefit  which  must  come  in  the  light  of  the  knowledge  of 
man's  true  place  in  Nature,  his  relations  to  the  universe 
at  large,  and  finally,  how  his  life,  his  happiness,  his 
career,  and  his  material  progress  is  completely  under  the 
sway  of  those  natural  laws  that  in  common  affect  both 
the  earth  and  every  living  organism  uoon  it.  Similarly, 
all  of  man's  social  and  educational  institutions  must  be 
influenced  for  the  better  through  the  same  means  in  the 
future.  Art  will  receive  her  impress,  for  much  in  art  is 
a  reproduction  of  what  we  see  in  Nature,  and  if  it  be  that 
the  artist  cannot  read  Nature  aright  his  erroneous  ideas 
of  her  will,  of  a  certainty,  make  their  appearance  in  his 
work. 

Throughout  this  course  of  lectures  several  opportuni- 
ties have  been  taken  to  point  out  what  a  profound  influ- 
ence biological  progress  must  exert  upon  the  profession 
of  medicine  in  the  future,  and  this  must  be  sufficiently 
clear,  inasmuch  as  morphology  and  physiology  lie  at  the 
very  base  of  that  science.  'A  moment's  reflection  is  alone 
necessary  to  appreciate  how  the  same  influence  will  con- 


100  LECTURES 

tinue  to  be  extended  to  its  closely  allied  profession  of 
medical  jurisprudence,  for  very  frequently  an  exact 
knowledge  of  physiology  is  demanded  of  its  practitioners 
to  come  to  just  conclusions.  And  thus  it  can  be  shown 
that  there  is  not  a  single  activity  in  which  men  engage 
that  will  not,  in  the  future,  either  by  a  direct  knowledge 
of  one  or  another  of  the  biological  sciences,  or  through  an 
improvement  in  our  methods  adopted  for  mental  training 
engendered  by  their  introduction  into  our  system  of  edu- 
cation, be  more  or  less  beneficially  influenced  thereby. 

We  have  another  great  institution  with  us  that  of  re- 
cent years  has  been  powerfully  influenced  by  the  growth 
of  our  newly  acquired  knowledge  of  natural  laws,  and 
must,  of  necessity,  appreciate  that  fact  still  more  sensi- 
bly in  the  future.  I  refer  to  religion  and  to  Christianity; 
but  there  has  been  so  very  much  said  and  written  upon 
this  subject,  during  the  last  half  century,  that  it  would 
seem  to  be  almost  impossible  to  even  refer  to  so  vast  a 
field  for  comment  here  with  the  hope  of  bringing  any 
new  light  to  bear.  To  my  mind,  time  alone  is  required 
for  the  true  and  lasting  adjustments  to  be  arrived  at  in 
such  premises.  The  broadest  thinkers  in  the  church  are 
not  slow  in  seeing  that  truth  alone  controls  scientific 
progress;  every  page  in  human  history  establishes  that 
fact,  and  surely,  religion  has  nothing  to  fear  from  any  such 
quarter.  And  it  must  be  evident  that  wise  indeed  will 
be  that  church  that  can  most  rapidly  and  surely  accom- 
modate itself,  at  all  times,  to  ,the  intellectual  growth  of 
the  world.  It  can  but  redound  to  her 
credit,  broaden  her  conceptions,  and  improve  religious 
teachings  and  methods.  Scientific  criticism  is  so  keen, 
so  exacting,  and  so  impartial,  in  these  days,  that  it  con- 
stitutes the  most  formidable  foe  extant  to  anything  that 
may  arise,  even  within  the  very  ranks  of  science,  at  all 
incompatible  with  what  is  true;  and  it  is  simply  out  of 
the  question  to  have  any  hypothesis  live  for  a  moment, 
come  from  whence  it  may,  unless  it  be  reared  upon 
ample,  veil  attested  facts  and  figures.  It  will  meet  with 
almost  instant  refutation  at  the  very  hands  of  scientific 
men  themselves,  and  if  any  layman  choose  to  test  the 
truth  of  this,  and  test  how  exacting  science  is  in  these 
respects  as  to  the  question  of  matter  of  fact,  he  has  but 
to  do  and  publish  some  small  piece  of  monographic 
work  in  biology,  into  which  he  has  allowed  to  creep  er- 
rors here  and  there,  to  appreciate  how  promptly  the 
workers  in  similar  fields  will  take  pleasure  in  publicly 
correcting  them  for  his  instruction  and  guidance  in  the 


ON  BIOLOGY.  101 

future.  Such  a  person  would  soon  come  to  appreciate 
the  fact,  a  fact  that  science  in  all  ages  has  appreciated, 
that  truth-seeking  is  a  very  safe  occupation,  and  truth- 
telling  exceedingly  useful. 

A  few  years  ago  Doctor  White  made  some  excellent  re- 
marks upon  this  side  of  the  question,  when  he  said: 
"May  we  not,  then,  hope  that  the  greatest  and  best 
men  in  the  Church — the  men  standing  at  centers  of 
thought— will  insist  with  power,  more  and  more,  that 
religion  be  no  longer  tied  to  so  injurious  a  policy  as  that 
which  this  warfare  reveals;  that  searchers  for  truth, 
whether  in  theology  or  natural  science,  work  on  as 
friends,  sure  that,  no  matter  how  much  at  variance  they 
may  at  times  seem  to  be  the  truths  they  reach  shall 
finally  be  fused  into  each  other?  The  dominant  religious 
conceptions  of  the  world  will  doubtless  be  greatly  modi- 
fied by  science  in  the  future,  as  they  have  been  in  the 
past;  and  the  part  of  any  wisely  religious  person,  at  any 
center  of  influence,  is  to  see  that,  in  his  generation,  this 
readjustment  of  religion  to  science  be  made  as  quietly 
and  speedily  as  possible." 

My  brief  connection  with  this  university,  as  an  invited 
lecturer,  has  been  an  exceedingly  pleasurable  one,  and 
this  has  been  rendered  especially  so  from  the  fact  that  it 
has  convinced  me  of  the  great  breadth  of  its  views  in  re- 
spect to  its  relation  to  modern  progress  and  modern 
thought;  and  still  more  from  the  fact  that  it  proposes  to 
institute  methods  and  operations  that  will' effectually 
carry  scientific  teaching  into  her  curriculum  and  the 
scheme  of  her  instruction.  When  a  great  Catholic  Uni- 
versity does  this  she  takes  a  distinct  step  in  advance,  and 
expresses  the  courage  of  her  convictions  that  her  faith 
surrounds  the  true  kernel  of  religion;  and  although  the 
truths  advanced  by  science  may  cast  strong  suspicions  upon 
many  of  the  long-cherished  traditional  beliefs,  or  even 
utterly  refute  them,  she  fears  not  those  truths  for  they 
can  have  but  the  one  effect  of  stripping  away  all  that  is 
unworthy  of  her  and  permitting  that  kernel,  to  which  I 
have  just  made  reference,  to  shine  forth  with  the  greate~ 
brilliancy  and  power. 

In  closing  it  gives  me  pleasure  to  tender  my  most  sin- 
cere thanks  for  the  courteous  and  hearty  reception  ex- 
tended me  by  the  members  of  this  University;  and,  what 
has  been  even  more  gratifying  to  me,  the  compliment, 
which  I  most  keenly  appreciate,  of  the  undisturbed  and 
continuous  attention  which  the  Faculty,  students  and 
audience  have  so  kindly  bestowed  upon  my  remarks  from 


102 


LECTURES 


the  beginning  of  the  first  lecture  to  the  close  of  the   final 
one  which  I  have  had  the  honor   to  bring  before  you  this 
evening. 
Takoma  Park,  D.  C. 


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